



TICKNOR & COMPANY 



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SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle. 

This earth ofvtajesty, this seat of Mars, 

This other Eden, demi-paradise, 

This fortress built by Nature for herself. 

This precious stone set in the silver sea, 

This blessed plot, this earth, this reahn, this England, 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land. 

Dear for her reputation through the world! 

Shakespeare. 



SHAKESPEARE'S 
ENGLAND 

BY ^ 

WILLIAM WINTER 




BOSTON 

TICKNOR AND COMPANY 

EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS 

1886 




Copyright, 1878, 1880, 1883, and 18S6 

By WILLIAM WINTER 

A II rights reserved 



r\P 



a 



ITHE LIBRARY! 
lor CONGRBSS 

iwASHlNGTOlT 



PEEFACE. 



Beautiful and storied scenes lohich have 
soothed and elevated the mind, naturally 
inspire a feeling of gratitude. Prompted 
by this feeling, the present author lias 
written this record of his rambles in 
England. It was his ivish, in dtvelling 
thus upon the rural loveliness and the 
literary and historical associations of that 
delightful realm, to afford sympathetic 
guidance and useful suggestion to other 
American travellers who, like himself, 
might be attracted to roam among the 
shrines of the mother land. There is no 
pursuit more fascinating, or in a high in- 
tellectual sense mnore remunerative ; since it 
serves to define and regulate the stores of 
knowledge which have been acquired by 
reading, to correct misapprehensions of fact. 



to broaden the mental vision, to ripen and 
refine tlie judgment and the taste, and to 
fill the memory with ennobling recollections. 
These imipers, accordingly, since they aim 
to encourage this pursuit, are at least cre- 
ditable in design, however defective they 
may be in execution. They tvere addressed 
more particidarly to American than to 
European readers. They commemorate tivo 
separate visits to England, the first made 
in 1877, the second in 1882 ; they occa- 
sionally touch upon the same place or scene 
as observed at different times ; and especi- 
ally they describe two distinct journeys, 
separated by an interval of five years, 
through the region associated with the great 
name of ShaJcespeare. Repetitions of the 
same reference, ichich now and then occur, 
were found unavoidable by the writer, but 
it is hoped that they will not be found 
tedious by the reader. (Those who loalk 
twice in the same j?;a^7M(J(X?/s shoidd be 
pleased, and not pained, to find the same 
wild-fioivers growing beside them. \ The 
American edition of this vjork is comprised 



in tivo volumes, published at Boston, called 
"The Trip to England" a7id "English 
Eambles." The first of these was embel- 
lished with beautiful illustrations, by Joseph 
Jefferson, the famous comedian, ray lifelong 
friend. The approbation expressed by Eng- 
lish readers of those volumes has led to the 
publication of the present reprint—for which 
the author has revised and re-arranged his 
text. The paper on the Home of ShaJce- 
speare was wr^itten to record for the Ameri- 
can public the dedication of the Shakespeare 
Memorial at Stratford ; and it was first 
imblished in ' ' Harper's Magazine " for 
May 1879, with illustrations, equally poeti- 
cal ayid truthful, from the graceful and 
delicate hand of Edioin Abbey. The first 
volume of the American edition was dedi- 
cated to Whitelaw Reid, the honoured editor 
of the "New York Tribune;" the second 
to Laiorence Barrett, one of the most 
rvorthily distinguished of American actors. 
This reprint has been called " Shake- 
speare's England" for the reason that the 
book relates so largely to Warwickshire, and 



5 PREFACE, 

because it depicts not so much the England 
of fact as the England created and hal- 
lowed by the spirit of her poetry, of ivhich 
Shakespeare is the soid. To his British 
readers the author luishes to say that it is 
neither from lacTc of sympathy ivith the 
happiness around him, nor from lack of 
faith in the bright future of his own coun- 
try, that his writings have drifted toiuard 
the pathos in human experience and the 
hallowing associations of an old historic 
land. Temperament is the explancdion of 
style : and he has written thus of England 
because she has filed his mind loitJi beauty 
and his heart with mingled joy and sad- 
ness : and surely some memory of her vener- 
able ruins, her ancient shriJies, her rustic 
glens, her gleaming rivers, and her flower- 
spangled meadows will mingle with the last 
thoughts that glimmer through his brain 
when the shadows of the eternal night are 
falling and the ramble of life is done. 

W. W. 

Castleton Staten Island, 

New York, March I2th, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. THE VOYAGE, 11 

II. THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND, . . 20 

III. GEEAT HISTORIC PLACES, . . 31 

IV. RAMBLES IN LONDON, ... 39 
V. A VISIT TO WINDSOR, ... 49 

VI. THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, . 59 

VII. WARWICK AND KENILWORTH, . . 69 

VIIL FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON, 77 

IX. LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS, . 90 

X. RELICS OF LORD BYRON, . . . 100 

XI. WESTMINSTER ABBEY, . . 107 

XII. THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE, . .118 



lO CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XIII. UP TO LONDON, . . , 177 

XIV. OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON, . . 184 

XV. LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON, . 195 
XVL A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN, . . 204 
XVIL STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY, . 211 

XVITI. AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE, . 219 

XIX. ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD, , . 228 

XX. A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY, , .234 

XXI. THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE, . 242 

XXII. A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT, . . 259 



SHAKESPEAKE'S ENGLAND. 



THE VOYAGE. 
1877. 

THE coast-line recedes and disappears, 
and night comes down upon the ocean. 
Into what dangers will the great ship 
plunge? Through what mysterious waste 
of waters will she make her viewless path ? 
The black waves roll up around her. The 
strong blast fills her sails and whistles 
through her creaking cordage. Overhead 
the stars shine dimly amidst the driving 
clouds. Mist and gloom close in the 
dubious prospect, and a strange sadness 
settles upon the heart of the voyager — who 
has left his home behind, and who now 
seeks, for the first time, the land, the 
homes, and the manners of the stranger. 
Thoughts and images of the past crowd 
thick upon his remembrance. The faces of 
absent friends rise up before him, whom, 



12 THE VOYAGE. 

perhaps, he is destined nevermore to be- 
hold. He sees their smiles ; he hears their 
voices ; he fancies them by familiar hearth- 
stones, in the light of the evening lamps. 
Tliey are very far away now ; and already 
it seems months instead of hours since the 
parting moment. Vain now the pang of 
regret for misunderstandings, unkindness, 
neglect ; for golden moments slighted, and 
gentle courtesies left undone. He is alone 
upon the wild sea — all the more alone be- 
cause surrounded with new faces of un- 
known companions — and the best he can do 
is to seek his lonely pillow, and lie down 
with a prayer in his heart and on his lips. 
Never before did he so clearly know- 
never again will he so deeply feel — the 
uncertainty of human life and the weakness 
of human nature. Yet, as he notes the 
rush and throb of the vast ship, and the 
noise of the breaking waves around her, 
and thinks of the mighty deep beneath, and 
the broad and melancholy expanse that 
stretches away on every side, he cannot 
miss the impression — grand, noble, and 
thrilling — of human courage, skill, and 
power. For this ship is the centre of a 
splendid conflict. Man and the elements 
are here at war ; and man makes conquest 



THE VOYAGE. 1 3 

of the elements by using them as weapons 
against themselves. Strong and brilliant, 
the head-light streams over the boiling 
surges. Lanterns gleam in the tops. Dai'k 
figures keep watch upon the prow. The 
officer of the night is at his post upon the 
bridge. Let danger threaten howsoever it 
may, it cannot come unawares ; it cannot 
subdue, without a tremendous struggle, the 
brave minds and hardy bodies that are here 
arrayed to meet it. With this thought, per- 
haps, the weary voyager sinks to sleep ; and 
this is his first night at sea. 

There is no tediousness of solitude to 
him who has within himself resources of 
thought and dream, the pleasures and pains 
of memory, the bliss and the torture of 
imaghiation. It is best to have few ac- 
quaintances — or none at all — on shipboard. 
Human companionship, at some times (and 
this is one of them), distracts by its petti- 
ness. The voyager should yield himself 
to nature, now, and meet his own soul face 
to face. The routine of everyday life is 
commonplace enough, equally upon sea and 
land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, 
filling and soothing the mind with unspeak- 
able peace. Never, in even the grandest 
words of poetry, was the grandeur of the 



14 THE VOYAGE. 

sea expressed. Its vastness, its freedom, 
its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the mind. 
All things else seem puny and momentary 
beside the life which by this immense crea- 
tion is unfolded and inspired. Sometimes it 
shines in the sun, a wilderness of shimmer- 
ing silver. Sometimes its long waves are 
black, smooth, glittering, and dangerous. 
Sometimes it seems instinct with a superb 
wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash 
together, and break into crests of foam. 
Sometimes it is grey and quiet, as if in a 
sullen sleep. Sometimes the white mist 
broods upon it, and deepens the sense of 
awful mystery by which it is for ever en- 
wrapped. At night, its surging billows 
are furrowed with long streaks of phos- 
phorescent fire ; or, it may be, the waves 
roll gently, under the soft light of stars ; 
or all the waste is dim, save where, beneath 
the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening 
out to the far horizon, allures and points to 
heaven. One of the most exquisite delights 
of the voyage, whether by day or night, is 
to lie upon the deck, in some secluded spot, 
and look up at the tall, tapering spars as 
they sway with the motion of the ship, 
while over them the white clouds float, in 
ever-changing shapes, or the starry con- 



THE VOYAGE. 1 5 

stellations drift, in their eternal march. 
No need now of books, or newspapers, or 
talk ! The eyes are fed by every object 
they behold. The great ship, with all her 
white wings spread, careening like a tiny 
sail-boat, dips and rises, with sinuous, 
stately grace. The clank of her engines — 
fit type of steadfast industry and purpose — 
goes steadily on. The song of the sailors 
— " Give me some time to blow the man 
down " — rises in cheery melody, full of 
audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, 
and strangely tinged with the romance of 
the sea. Far out toward the horizon a 
school of whales come sporting and spout- 
ing along. At once, out of the distant 
bank of cloud and mist, a little vessel 
springs into view, and with short, jerking 
movement — tilting up and down like the 
miniature barque upon an old Dutch clock 
— dances across the vista and vanishes into 
space. Soon a tempest bursts upon the 
calm ; and then, safe-housed from the 
fierce blast and blinding rain, the voy- 
ager exults over the stern battle of winds 
and waters, and the stalwart, undaunted 
strength with which his ship bears down 
the furious floods and stems the gale. By 
and by a quiet hour is given, when, met 



l6 THE VOYAGE. 

together with all the companions of his 
journey, he stands in the hushed cabin and 
hears the voice of prayer and the hymn of 
praise ; and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple 
of waves against the ship, which now rocks 
lazily upon the quiet deep — and, ever and 
anon, as she dips, he can discern through 
her open ports the shining sea and the 
wheeling and circling gulls that have come 
out to welcome her to the shores of the Old 
World. 

The present writer, when first [ he saw 
the distant and dim coast of Britain, felt, 
with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he 
was a stranger ; but, when last he saw that 
coast, he beheld it through a mist of tears, 
and knew that he had parted from many 
cherished friends, from many of the gentlest 
men and women upon the earth, and from 
a land henceforth as dear to him as his own. 
England is a country which to see is to love. 
As you draw near to her shores you are 
pleased, at once, with the air of careless 
finish and negligent grace which every- 
where overhangs the prospect. The grim, 
wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been 
passed — hills crowned, here and there, with 
dark, fierce towers that look like strong- 
holds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by 



THE VOYAGE. 1 7 

dim valleys that seem to promise endless 
mystery and romance, hid in their sombre 
depths. Passed also is white Queenstown, 
with its lovely little bay, its circle of green 
hillsides, and its valiant fort ; and pictur- 
esque Fastnet, with its gaily painted 
tower, has long been left behind. It is off 
the noble crags of Holyhead that the voy- 
ager first observes with what a deft skill 
the hand of art has here moulded nature's 
luxuriance into forms of seeming chance- 
born beauty ; and from that hour, wher- 
ever in rural England the footsteps of the 
pilgrim may roam, he will behold nothing 
but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown 
with the grass and the roses — greener grass 
and redder roses than ever we see in our 
Western World ! In the English nature a 
love of the beautiful is spontaneous ; and 
the operation of it is as eflfortless as the 
blowing of the summer wind. Portions of 
English cities, indeed, are hard, and harsh, 
and coarse enough to suit the most utili- 
tarian taste ; yet, even in these regions of 
dreary monotony, the national love of 
flowers will find expression, and the people, 
without being aware of it, will, in many odd 
little ways, beautify their homes and make 
their surroundings pictorial, at least to 



1 8 THE VOYAGE. 

stranger eyes. There is a tone of rest and 
home-like comfort even in murky Liverpool ; 
and great magnificence is there — as well of 
architecture and opulent living as of enter- 
prise and action. " Towered cities " and 
" the busy hum of men," however, are soon 
left behind by the wise traveller in England. 
A time will come for these ; but in his first 
sojourn there he soon discovers the two 
things which are utterly to absorb him — 
which cannot disappoint — and which are the 
fulfilment of all his dreams. These things 
are — the rustic loveliness of the land, and 
the charm of its always vital and splendid 
antiquity. The green lanes, the thatched 
cottages, the meadows glorious with wild- 
flowers, the little churches covered with 
dark-green ivy, the Tudor fronts festooned 
with roses, the devious footpaths that wind 
across wild heaths and long and lonesome 
fields, the narrow, shining rivers, brimful 
to their banks, and crossed here and there 
with grey and moss-grown bridges, the 
stately elms, whose low-hanging branches 
droop over a turf of emerald velvet, the 
gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe their old, 
fantastic roots so high," the rooks that caw 
and circle in the air, the sweet winds that 
blow from fragrant woods, the sheep and 



THE VOYAGE. 1 9 

the deer that rest in shady places, the pretty 
children who cluster round the porches of 
their cleanly, cosy homes, and peep at the 
wayfarer as he passes, the numerous and 
often brilliant birds that at times fill the air 
with music, the brief, light, pleasant rains 
that ever and anon refresh the landscape — 
these are some of the everyday joys of 
rural England ; and these are wrapped in a 
climate that makes life one serene ecstasy. 
Meantime, in rich valleys or on verdant 
slopes, a thousand old castles and monas- 
teries, ruined or half in ruins, allure the 
pilgrim's gaze, inspire his imagination, 
arouse his memory, and fill his mind. The 
best romance of the past and the best 
reality of the present are his banquet now ; 
and nothing is wanting to the perfection of 
the feast. I thought that life could have 
but few moments of content in store for me 
like the moment — never to be forgotten ! — 
when, in the heart of London, on a perfect 
June day, I lay upon the grass in the old 
Green Park, and, for the first time, looked 
up to the towers of Westminster Abbey. 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 



11. 

THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

IT is not strange that Englishmen should 
be — as certainly they are — passionate 
lovers of their country ; for their country 
is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, 
and beautiful. Even in vast London, where 
practical life asserts itself with such pro- 
digious force, the stranger is impressed, 
in every direction, with a sentiment of re- 
pose and peace. This sentiment seems to 
proceed in part from the antiquity of the 
social system here established, and in part 
from the affectionate nature of the English 
people. Here are finished towns, rural 
regions thoroughly cultivated and exqui- 
sitely adorned ; ancient architecture, crum- 
bling in slow decay ; and a soil so rich and 
pure that even in its idlest mood it lights 
itself up with flowers, just as the face of a 
sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. 
Here, also, are soft and kindly manners, 
settled principles, good laws, wise customs 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 21 

— wise, because rooted in the universal at- 
tributes of human nature ; and, above all, 
here is the practice of trying to live in a 
happy condition instead of trying to make 
a noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is 
soothed and hallowed with the comfortable, 
genial, loving spirit of home. It would, 
doubtless, be easily possible to come into 
contact here with absurd forms and per- 
nicious abuses, to observe absurd indi- 
viduals, and to trace out veins of sordid 
selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the 
things that first and most deeply impress 
the fresh observer of England and English 
society are their potential, manifold, and 
abundant sources of beauty, refinement, and 
peace. There are, of course, grumblers. 
Mention has been made of a person who, 
even in heaven, would complain that his 
cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. "We 
cannot have perfection ; but the man who 
could not be happy in England — in so far, 
at least, as happiness depends upon external 
objects and influences — could not reasonably 
expect to be happy anywhere. 

Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or 
two each day, but it causes no discomfort. 
Fog has refrained ; though it is understood 
to be lurking in the Irish Sea and the English 



22 THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

Channel, and waiting for November, when 
it will drift into town and grime all the new 
paint on the London houses. Meantime, 
the sky is softly blue, and full of magnifi- 
cent bronze clouds ; the air is cool, and, in 
the environs of the city, is fragrant with 
the scent of new-mown hay ; and the grass 
and trees in the parks — those copious and 
splendid lungs of London — are green, dewy, 
sweet, and beautiful. Persons "to the 
manner born " were lately calling the season 
"backward," and they went so far as to 
grumble at the hawthorn, as being less 
brilliant than in former seasons. But, in 
fact, to the unfamiliar sense, this tree of 
odorous coral has been delicious. We 
have nothing comparable with it in Northern 
America, unless, perhaps, it be the elder, of 
our wild woods ; and even that, with all its 
fragrance, lacks equal charm of colour. They 
use the hawthorn, or some kindred shrub, 
for hedges in this country, and hence their 
fields are seldom disfigured with fences. As 
you ride through the land, you see miles and 
miles of meadow traversed by these green 
and blooming hedgerows, which give the 
country a charm quite incommunicable in 
words. The green of the foliage — enriched 
by an uncommonly humid air, and burnished 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 23 

by the sun — is in perfection, while the 
flowers are out in such abundance that the 
whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw 
near Oxford, on the crest of a hill, a single 
ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet 
poppies. Imagine that glorious dash of 
colour in a green landscape lit by the after- 
noon sun ! Nobody could help loving a land 
that wooes him with such beauty. 

English flowers are exceptional for sub- 
stance and pomp. The roses, in particular 
— though many of them, it should be said, 
are of French breeds — surpass all others. 
It may seem an extravagance to say, but 
it is certainly true, that these rich, firm, 
brilliant flowers afiect you like creatures of 
flesh and blood. They are, in this respect, 
only to be described as like nothing in the 
world so much as the bright lips and blush- 
ing cheeks of the handsome English women 
who walk among them and vie with them 
in health and loveliness. It is easy to per- 
ceive the source of those elements of warmth 
and sumptuousness which are so conspicuous 
in the results of English taste. It is a land 
of flowers. Even in the busiest parts of 
London the people decorate their houses 
with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed 
fronts ablaze with scarlet and gold. These 



24 THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

are the prevalent colours (so radically such 
that they have become national), and, when 
placed against the black tint with which this 
climate stains the buildings, they have the 
advantage of a vivid contrast which much 
augments their splendour. All London 
wears " a suit of sables," variegated with a 
tracery of white, like lace upon a pall. In 
some instances the effect is splendidly pomp- 
ous. There cannot be a grander artificial 
object in the world than the front of St. 
Paul's Cathedral, which is especially not- 
able for this mysterious blending of light 
and shade. It is to be deplored that a 
climate which can thus beautify should also 
destroy ; but there can be no doubt that the 
stones of England are steadily defaced by 
the action of the moist atmosphere. Al- 
ready the delicate carvings on the Palace 
of Westminster are beginning to crumble. 
And yet, if one might judge the climate by 
this glittering July, England is a land of 
sunshine as well as of flowers. Light comes 
before three o'clock in the morning, and it 
lasts, through a dreamy and lovely ' * gloam- 
ing," till nearly ten o'clock at night. The 
morning sky is usually light blue, dappled 
with slate-coloured clouds. A few large 
stars are visible then, lingering to outface 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 2$ 

the dawn. Cool winds whisper, and pre- 
sently they rouse the great, sleepy, old 
elms ; and then the rooks — which are the 
low comedians of the air in this region — 
begin to grumble ; and then the sun leaps 
above the horizon, and we sweep into a day 
of golden, breezy cheerfulness and comfort, 
the like of which is rarely or never known 
in New York, between June and October. 
Sometimes the whole twenty-four hours 
have drifted past, as if in a dream of light, 
and fragrance, and music. In a recent 
moonlight time there was scarce any dark- 
ness at all ; and more than once I have lain 
awake all night, within a few miles of 
Charing Cross, listening to the twitter of 
birds, which is like the lapse and fall of 
silver water. It used to be difficult to 
understand why the London season should 
begin in May and last through most of the 
summer ; it is not difficult to understand 
the custom now. 

The elements of discontent and disturb- 
ance which are visible in English society 
are found, upon close examination, to be 
merely superficial. Underneath them there 
abides a sturdy, unshakeable, inborn love of 
England. These croakings, grumblings, 
and bickerings do but denote the process by 



26 THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

which the body politic frees itself from the 
headaches and fevers that embarrass the 
national health. The Englishman and his 
country are one ; and when the Englishman 
complains against his country, it is not be- 
cause he believes that either there is or can 
be a better country elsewhere, but because 
his instinct of justice and order makes him 
crave perfection in his own. Institutions 
and principles are, with him, by nature, 
paramount to individuals ; and individuals 
only possess Importance — and that condi- 
tional on abiding rectitude — who are their 
representatives. Everything is done in 
England to promote the permanence and 
beauty of the home ; and the permanence 
and beauty of the home, by a natural re- 
action, augment in the English people 
solidity of character and peace of life. They 
do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as 
to the acts, thoughts, and words of other 
races : for the English there is absolutely 
no public opinion outside of their own land : 
they do not live for the sake of working, 
but they work for the sake of living ; and, 
as the necessary preparations for living have 
long since been completed, their country is 
at rest. This is the secret of England's 
first, and continuous, and last, and all-per- 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 2"] 

vading charm and power for the stranger— 
the charm and power to soothe. 

The efficacy of endeavouring to make a 
country a united, comfortable, and beautiful 
home for all its inhabitants, — binding every 
heart to the land by the same tie that binds 
every heart to the fireside, — is something 
well worthy to be considered, equally by 
the practical statesman and the contempla- 
tive observer. That way, assuredly, lies the 
welfare of the human race, and all the 
tranquillity that human nature — warped as 
it is by sin — will ever permit to this world. 
This endeavour has, through long ages, been 
steadily pursued in England, and one of its 
results — which is also one of its indica- 
tions — is the vast accumulation of what 
may be called home treasures in the city of 
London. The mere enumeration of them 
would fill large volumes. The description of 
them could not be completed in a lifetime. 
It was this copiousness of historic wealth 
and poetic association, combined with the 
flavour of character and the sentiment of 
monastic repose, that bound Dr. Johnson 
to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb 
such an inveterate lover of the town. 
Except it be to correct a possible insular 
narrowness, there can be no need that the 



28 THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, 
indeed, await him, if he journeys no further 
away than Paris ; but, aside from ostenta- 
tion, luxury, gaiety, and excitement, Paris 
will give him nothing that he may not find 
at home. The great cathedral of Notre 
Dame will awe him ; but not more than his 
own Westminster Abbey. The grandeur 
and beauty of the Madeleine will enchant 
him ; but not more than the massive sol- 
emnity and stupendous magnificence of St. 
Paul's. The embankments of the Seine 
will satisfy his taste with their symmetri- 
cal solidity ; but he will not deem them 
superior, in any respect, to the embank- 
ments of the Thames. The Pantheon, the 
Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, the 
Louvre, the Tribunal of Commerce, the 
Opera-House, — all these will dazzle and 
delight his eyes, arousing his remembrances 
of history and firing his imagination of 
great events and persons ; but all these will 
fail to displace in his esteem the grand 
Palace of Westminster, so stately in its 
simplicity, so strong in its perfect grace ! 
He will ride through the exquisite Park of 
Monceau — one of the loveliest spots in 
France, — and so onward to the Bois de 
Boulogne, with its sumptuous pomp of 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 29 

foliage, its romantic green vistas, its multi- 
tudinous winding avenues, its hillside her- 
mitage, its cascades, and its* affluent lakes 
whereon the white swans beat the »vater 
with their glad, joyous wings ; but his soul 
will still turn, with unshaken love and 
loyal preference, to the sweetly sylvan soli- 
tudes of the Gardens of Kensington and 
Kew. He will marvel in the museums of 
the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and Cluny ; 
and, doubtless, he will freely concede that 
of paintings, whether ancient or modern, 
the French display is larger and finer than 
the English ; but he will vaunt the British 
Museum as peerless throughout the world, 
and he will still prize his National Gallery, 
with its originals of Hogarth, Keynolds, 
Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, 
tender, and dreamy Murillos, and its 
dusky glories of Rembrandt. He will ad- 
mire, at the The§,tre Fran9ais, the photo- 
graphic perfection of French acting ; but 
he will be apt to reflect that English drama- 
tic art, if it sometimes lacks finish, some- 
times possesses nature ; and he will certainly 
perceive that the playhouse itself is not 
superior to either Her Majesty's Theatre 
or Covent Garden. He will luxuriate 
in the Champs Elysees, in the superb 



30 THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND. 

Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of 
precious jewels that blazes in the Rue de 
la Paix and the Palais Royal, and in that 
gorgeous panorama of shop-windows for 
which the French capital is unrivalled and 
famous ; and he will not deny that, as to 
brilliancy of aspect, Paris is prodigious and 
unequalled — the most radiant of cities — the 
sapphire in the crown of Solomon. But, 
when all is seen, either that Louis the 
Fourteenth created or Buonaparte pillaged, 
— when he has taken his last walk in 
the gardens of the Tuileries, and mused, 
at the foot of the statue of Csesar, on that 
Titanic strife of monarchy and democracy of 
which France seems destined to be the per- 
petual theatre, — sated with the glitter of 
showy opulence, and tired with the whirl 
of frivolous life, he will gladly and grate 
fully turn again to his sombre, mysterious, 
thoughtful, restful old London ; and, like 
the Syrian captain, though in the better 
spirit of truth and right, declare that 
Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, 
are better than all the waters of Israel. 



GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 3I 



in. 

GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 

THERE is so much to be seen in London 
that the pilgrim scarcely knows where 
to choose, and certainly is perplexed by 
what Dr. Johnson called "the multiplicity 
of agreeable consciousness." One spot to 
which I have many times been drawn, and 
^vhich the mention of Dr. Johnson instantly 
calls to mind, is the stately and solemn 
place in Westminster Abbey where that 
great man's ashes are buried. Side by side, 
under the pavement of the Abbey, within a 
few feet of earth, sleep Johnson, Garrick, 
Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, 
and Handel. Garrick's wife is buried in the 
same grave with her husband. Close by, 
some brass letters on a little slab in the 
pavement disclose the last resting-place of 
Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body 
of Macaulay ; while many a stroller through 
the nave treads upon the gravestone of that 
astonishing old man, Thomas Parr, who 



32 GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 

lived in the reigns of nine princes (1483- 
1635), and reached the great age of 152. 
All parts of Westminster Abbey impress 
the reverential mind. It is an experience 
very strange and full of awe suddenly to 
find your steps upon the sepulchres of such 
illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and 
Grattan ; and you come, with a thrill of 
more than surprise, upon such still fresh 
antiquity as the grave of the hapless Anne 
Neville, who was the daughter of Warwick 
and the Queen of Richard the Third. But 
no single spot in the great cathedral can so 
enthral the imagination as that strip of 
storied stone beneath which Garrick, John- 
son, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, 
Dickens, Macaulay, Argyle, and Handel 
sleep, side by side. This writer, when 
lately he visited the Abbey, found a chair 
upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down 
there to rest and muse. The letters on the 
stone are fast wearing away ; but the 
memory of this sturdy champion of thought 
can never perish, as long as the votaries 
of literature love their art, and honour 
the valiant genius which battled — through 
hunger, toil, and contumely — for its dignity 
and renown. It was a tender and right 
feeling which prompted the burial of John- 



GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 33 

son close beside Garrick. They set out 
together to seek their fortunes in the great 
city. They went through privation and 
trial hand in hand. Each found glory in a 
different way ; and, although parted after- 
ward by the currents of fame and wealth, 
they were never sundered in affection. It 
was fit they should at last find their rest 
together, under the most glorious roof that 
greets the skies of England. 

Fortune gave me a good first day at the 
Tower of London. The sky lowered. The 
air was very cold. The wind blew with 
angry gusts. The rain fell, now and then, 
in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and 
sullen. If the spirits of the dead come back 
to haunt any place they surely come back 
to haunt this one ; and this was a day for 
their presence. One dark ghost seemed 
near, at every step — the baleful shade of 
the grim Duke of Gloster. The little room 
in which the princes are said to have been 
murdered, by his command, was shown, 
and the oratory where King Henry the 
Sixth is supposed to have met his bloody 
death, and the council chamber, in which 
Richard — after listening, in an ambush be- 
hind the arras — denounced the wretched 
Hastings. The latter place is now used as 

s.E. c 



34 GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 

an armoury ; but the same ceiling covers it 
which echoed the bitter invective of Gloster 
and the rude clamour of his soldiers, when 
their frightened victim was plucked forth 
and dragged downstairs, to be beheaded on 
"a timber-log" in the courtyard. The 
Tower is a place for such deeds, and you 
almost wonder that they do not happen 
still, in its gloomy chambers. The room 
in which the princes were killed is par- 
ticularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner 
room, small and dark. A barred window 
in one of its walls fronts a window on the 
other side of the passage by which you ap- 
proach it. This is but a few feet from the 
floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to 
look through it as they went to their 
hellish work upon the poor children of King 
Edward. The entrance Avas pointed out to 
a secret passage by which this apartment 
could be approached from the foot of the 
Tower. In one gloomy stone chamber the 
crown jeAvels are exhibited, in a large glass 
case. There is a crown here, of velvet 
and gold, which was made for poor Anne 
Boleyn. You may pass across the court- 
yard and pause on the spot where this 
miserable woman was beheaded, and you 
may walk thence over the ground that her 



C4REAT HISTORIC PLACES. 35 

last trembling footsteps traversed, to the 
round tower in which, at the close, she 
lived. Her grave is in the chancel of a 
little antique church, close by. I saw the 
cell of Raleigh, and that direful chamber 
which is scrawled all over with the names 
and emblems of prisoners who therein suf- 
fered confinement and lingering agony, 
nearly always ending in death ; but I saw 
no sadder place than Anne Boleyn's tower. 
It seemed in the strangest way eloquent of 
mute suffering. It seemed to exhale grief 
and to plead for love and pity. Yet — what 
woman ever had greater love than was 
lavished on her? And what woman ever 
trampled more royally and recklessly upon 
human hearts ? 

The Tower of London is degraded by 
being put to commonplace uses and by 
being exhibited in a commonplace manner. 
They use the famous White Tower now as 
a store-house for arms, and it contains about 
100,000 guns, besides a vast collection of old 
armour and weapons. The arrangement of 
the latter was made by J. R. Planche, the 
dramatic author, — famous as an antiquarian 
and a herald. [This learned, able, brilliant, 
and honoured gentleman died, May 29th, 
1880, aged 84 years.] Under his tasteful 



30 GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 

direction the effigies and gear of chivalry 
are displayed in such a way that the ob- 
server may trace the changes which war 
fashions have undergone, through the reigns 
of successive sovereigns of England, from 
the earliest period until now. A suit of 
mail worn by Henry the l^^ighth is shown, 
and also a suit worn by Charles the First. 
The suggestiveness of both figures is re- 
markable. In a room on the second floor 
of the White Tower they keep many 
gorgeous oriental weapons, and they show 
the cloak in which General Wolfe died, on 
the Plains of Abraham. It is a grey gar- 
ment, to which the active moth has given 
a share of his personal attention. The most 
impressive objects to be seen here, however, 
are the block and axe that were used in 
beheading the traitor lords, Kilmarnock, 
Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of 
the Pretender, in 1746. The block is of 
ash, and there are big and cruel dents 
upon it, which show that it was made for 
use rather than ornament. It is harmless 
enough now, and this writer was allowed 
to place his head upon it, in the manner 
prescribed for the victims of decapitation. 
The door of Ealeigh's bedroom is opposite 
to these baleful relics, and it is said that 



GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 37 

his History of the World was written in 
the room in which these implements are 
now such conspicuous objects of gloom. 
The whole place is gloomy and cheerless 
beyond expression, and great must have 
been the fortitude of the man who bore, in 
this gi'im solitude, a captivity of thirteen 
years — not failing to turn it to the best 
account, by producing a book so excellent 
for quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. 
A "beefeater," arrayed in a dark tunic 
and trousers trimmed with red, and a black 
velvet hat trimmed with bows of blue and 
red ribbon, precedes each group of visitors, 
and drops information and h's, from point 
to point. *' The 'ard fate of the Hurl of 
Hessex" was found to be a particularly 
fascinating topic with one of these function- 
aries ; and very hard it was — for the listener 
as well as the language — when standing on 
the spot where that poor gentleman lost his 
life, by the resentment of Queen Elizabeth 
and the inveterate enmity of Raleigh and 
Cecil, to hear his name so persecuted. This 
spot is in the centre of what was once the 
Tower Green, and it is marked with a brass 
plate, naming Anne Boleyn, and giving the 
date when she was there beheaded. They 
found her body in an elm-wood box, made 



38 GREAT HISTORIC PLACES. 

to hold arrows, and it now rests, with the 
ashes of other noble sufferers, under the 
stones of the chapel of St. Peter, about fifty 
feet from the place of execution. The ghost 
of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part 
of the Tower where she lived, and it is like- 
wise said that the spectre of Lady Jane 
Orey was seen, not long ago, on the anni- 
versary of the day of her execution [Obiit 
1554], to glide out upon a balcony adjacent 
to the room she is believed to have occu- 
pied, at the last of her wasted, unfortunate 
life. It could serve no good purpose to 
relate the particulars of these visitations ; 
but nobody doubts them — while he is in the 
Tower. It is a place of mystery and horror, 
notwithstanding all that the practical sj)irit 
of to-day can do, and has done, to make it 
common and to cheapen its grim glories. 



RAMBLES IN LONDON. 39 



IV. 

RAMBLES IN LONDON. 

ALL old cities get rich in association, as 
a matter of course, and whether they 
will or no ; but London, by reason of its 
great extent as well as its great antiquity, 
is richer in association than any modern 
place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes 
a step without encountering a new object 
of interest. The walk along the Strand 
and Fleet Street, in particular, is continu- 
ally on storied ground. Old Temple Bar 
still stands (July 1877), though " tottering 
to its fall," and marks the junction of the 
two streets. The statues of Charles the 
First and Charles the Second on its west- 
ern front would be remarkable anywhere, 
as characteristic portraits. You stand be- 
side this arch and quite forget the passing 
throng, and take no heed of the tumult 
around, as you think of Johnson and 
Boswell leaning against this wall after 
midnight in the far-off times and waking 



40 RAMBLES IN LONDOX. 

the echoes of the Temj)le Garden with their 
frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully 
propped now, and they will nurse its age as 
long as they can ; but it is an obstruction 
to traffic — and it must coine down. (It was 
removed in the summer of 1878.) They 
will, probably, set it up, newly built, in 
another place. They have left untouched 
a little piece of the original scaflfolding 
built around St. Paul's ; and this fragment 
of decaying wood may still be seen, high 
upon the side of the cathedral. The 
Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire Cheese, 
Dolly's Chop-House, the Cock, and the 
Round Table — taverns or public-houses that 
were frequented by the old wits — are still 
extant. The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely 
changed from what it was when Johnson, 
Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beef- 
steak pie and drank porter there, and the 
Doctor " tossed and gored several persons," 
as it was his cheerful custom to do. The 
benches in that room are as uncomfortable 
as they well could be ; mere ledges of well- 
worn wood, on which the visitor sits bolt 
upright, in difficult dignity ; but there is, 
probably, nothing on earth that would in- 
duce the owner to alter them — and he 
is right. The conservative principle in 



RAMBLES IN LOXDOX. 4 1 

the English mind, if it has saved some 
trash, has saved more treasure. At the 
foot of Buckingham Street, off the Strand, — 
where was situated an estate of George 
Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, assassi- 
nated in 1628, whose tomb may be seen in 
Henry the Seventh's Chapel, in Westminster 
Abbey, — still stands the slowly crumbling 
ruin of the old Water Gate, so often men- 
tioned as the place where accused traitors 
were embarked for the Tower. The river, 
in former times, flowed up to this, but the 
land along the margin of the Thames has 
been redeemed, and the magnificent Victoria 
and Albert Embankments now hem in the 
river for a long distance on both sides. 
The Water Gate, in fact, stands in a little 
park on the north bank of the Thames. 
Not far away is the Adelphi Terrace, where 
Garrick lived and died [Obiit January 
20th, 1779, aged 63], and where, on October 
1st, 1822, his widow expired, aged 98. The 
house of Garrick is let in " chambers " now. 
If you walk up the Strand toward Charing 
Cross, you presently come near to the 
Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which 
is one of the best works of Sir Christopher 
Wren. The fogs have stained this building 
witli such a deftly artistic touch that its 



42 RAMBLES IN LONDON. 

appearance has all the charm of a lovely 
stereoscopic view. Nell Gwyn's name is 
connected with St. Martin's. She used to 
worship there, and she left an incessant 
legacy to the ringers of the bell ; and at 
stated times, to this day, they ring it for 
" poor Nelly's " sake. Her funeral occurred 
in this church, and was very pompous, and 
no less a person than Tenison (afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury) preached the 
funeral sermon. That prelate's dust reposes 
in Lambeth Church, which can be seen, 
across the river, from this part of West- 
minster. If you walk down the Strand, 
through Temple Bar, you presently reach 
the Temple ; and there is no place in 
London where the past and the present are 
so strangely confronted as they are here. 
The venerable church, so quaint with its 
cone -pointed turrets, was sleeping in the 
sunshine when first I saw it ; sparrows 
were twittering around its spires and glid- 
ing in and out of the crevices in its ancient 
walls ; while from within a strain of organ 
music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till 
the air became a benediction, and every 
common thought and feeling was chastened 
away from mind and heart. The grave of 
Goldsmith is close to the pathway that runs 



RAMBLES IN LONDON. 43 

beside this church, on a terrace raised above 
the foundation of the building and above 
the little graveyard of the Templars that 
nestles at its base. As I stood beside the 
resting-place of that sweet poet, it was im- 
possible not to feel both grieved and glad — 
grieved at the thought of all he suffered, 
and of all that the poetic nature must 
always suffer before it will gi^e forth its 
immortal music for mankind : glad that his 
gentle spirit found rest at last, and that 
time has given him the crown he would most 
have prized — the affection of true hearts. 
A grey stone, coffin- shaped, and marked 
with a cross, — after the fashion of the con- 
tiguous tombs of the Templars, — is imposed 
upon his grave. One surface bears the in- 
scription, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith;" 
the other presents the dates of his birth and 
death. I tried to call up the scene of his 
burial, when, around the open grave, on 
tliat tearful April evening, Johnson, Burke, 
Eeynolds, Beauclerk, Boswell, Davies, Kelly, 
Palmer, and the rest of that broken circle, 
may have gathered to witness 

" The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid. 
And the last rites that dust to dust couveyed." 

No place could be less romantic than 



44 RAMBLES IN LONDON. 

Southwark is now ; but there are few 
places in England that possess a greater 
charm for the litex-ary pilgrim. Shake- 
speare lived there, and it was there that 
he managed a theatre and made a for- 
tune. Old London Bridge spanned the 
Thames, at this point, in those days, and 
was the only road to the Surrey side of the 
river. The theatre stood' near the end of 
the bridge, and was thus easy of access to 
the wits and beaux of London. No trace 
of it now remains ; but a public-house called 
the "Globe" — which was its name — is 
standing near ; and the old church of St. 
Saviour's — into which Shakespeare must 
often have entered — still braves the storms 
and still resists the encroachments of time 
and change. In Shakespeare's day there 
were houses on each side of London Bridge ; 
and as he walked on the bank of the 
Thames he could look across to the Tower, 
and to Baynard Castle, which had been the 
residence of Richard, Duke of Gloster, and 
could see, uplifted high in air, the spire of 
Old St. Paul's. The borough of Southwark 
was then but thinly peopled. Many of its 
houses, as may be seen in an old picture of 
the city, were surrounded by fields or 
gardens ; and life to its inhabitants must 



RAMBLES IN LONDON. 45 

have been comparatively rural. Now it is 
packed with buildings, gridironed with rail- 
ways, crowded with people, and to the last 
degree resonant and feverish with action 
and effort. Life swarms, traffic bustles, 
and travel thunders, all round the cradle of 
the British drama. The old church of St. 
Saviour's alone preserves the sacred memory 
of the past. I made a pilgrimage to this 
shrine, in the company of one of the kind- 
liest humourists in England. We took boat 
at Westminster Bridge and landed close by 
the church in Southwark, and we were so 
fortunate as to get permission to enter the 
church without a guide. The oldest part 
of it is the Lady Chapel — which, in Eng- 
lish cathedrals, is placed behind the choir. 
Through this we strolled, alone and in 
silence. Eveiy footstep there falls upon a 
grave. The pavement is one mass of grave- 
stones ; and through the tall, stained win- 
dows of the chapel a solemn light pours in 
upon the sculptured names of men and 
women who have long been dust. In one 
corner is an ancient stone coffin — a relic of 
the Roman days of Britain. This is the 
room in which Stephen Gardiner — Bishop of 
Winchester, in the days of cruel Queen 
]\Iary — held his ecclesiastical court, and con- 



46 RAMBLES IN LONDON. 

demned many a dissentient devotee to the 
rack and the fagot : in this very room he 
had himself been j)ut to trial, in his hour of 
misfortime. Both Mary and Elizabeth may 
often have entered this chapel. But it is in 
the choir, hard by, that the pilgrim pauses 
with most of reverence ; for here, not far 
from the altar, he stands at the graves of 
Edmund Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and 
Philip Massinger. They rest almost side 
by side, and only their names and the dates 
of their death are cut in the tablets that 
mark their sepulchres. Edmund Shake- 
speare, the younger brother of William, was 
an actor in his company, and died in 1607, 
aged twenty-seven. The great poet must 
have stood at this grave, and suffered and 
wept here ; and somehow the lover of 
Shakespeare comes very near to the heart 
of the master when he stands in this place. 
Massinger was buried there, March IS, 
1638, — the parish register recording him as 
"a stranger." Fletcher — of the Beaumont 
and Fletcher brotherhood— was buried there, 
in 1625 : Beaumont's gx'ave is in the Abbey. 
The dust of Henslowe, the manager, also 
rests beneath the pavement of St. Saviour's. 
In the north transept of the church is the 
tomb of John Gower, the old poet — whose 



EAMBLES IN LOXDOX. i\J 

effigy, carved and painted, reclines upon it, 
and is not pleasant to behold. A formal, 
severe aspect he must have had, if he re- 
sembled this image. The tomb has been 
moved from the spot where it first stood — 
a proceeding made necessary by a fire that 
destroyed part of the old church. It is said 
that Gower caused this tomb to be erected 
during his lifetime, so that it miglit be in 
readiness to receive his bones. The bones 
are lost, but the memorial remains— sacred 
to the memory of the father of English song. 
This tomb was restored by the Duke of 
Sutherland, in 1830, It is enclosed by a 
little fence made of iron spears, j)ainted 
l)roAATi and gilded at their points. I went 
into the new part of the church, and, quite 
alone, knelt in one of the j)ews, and long 
remained there, ovei'come with thoughts of 
the past, and of the transient, momentary 
nature of this our earthly life and the 
shadows that we pursue. 

One object of merriment attracts a passing 
glance in Southwark Church. There is a 
tomb in a corner of it that commemorates an 
ancient maker of patent medicine — an elabor- 
ate structure, with the deceased cut in effigy, 
and with a long and sonorous epitaph on the 
pedestal. These are two of the lines — 



48 RAMBLES IN LONDON. 

" His virtues and his pills are so well known 
That envy can't confine them under stone." 

Shakespeare once lived in Clink Street, in 
the borough of Southwark. Goldsmith prac- 
tised medicine there, for a while. Chaucer 
came there, with his Canterbury Pilgrims, 
and lodged at the Tabard Inn. It must 
have been a romantic region, in the old 
times. 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 49 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 

IF the beauty of England were merely 
superficial it would produce a merely 
superficial effect. It would cause a passing 
pleasure and would be forgotten. It cer- 
tainly would not — as now in fact it does — 
inspire a deep, joyous, serene and grateful 
contentment, and linger in the mind, a 
gracious and beneficent remembrance. The 
conquering and lasting potency of it resides 
not alone in loveliness of expression, but in 
loveliness of character. Having first great- 
ly blessed the British Islands with the nat- 
ural advantages of position, climate, soil, 
and products, nature has wrought out their 
development and adornment as a necessary 
consequence of the spirit of their inhabit- 
ants. The picturesque variety and pastoral 
repose of the English landscape spring, in a 
considerable measure, from the imaginative 
taste and the affectionate gentleness of 
the English people. The state of the coun- 



50 A VISIT TO WIXLtSOR. 

try, like its social constitution, flows from 
principles within (which are constantly 
suggested), and it steadily comforts and 
nourishes the mind with a sense of kindly 
feeling, moral rectitude, solidity, and per- 
manence. Thus in the peculiar beauty of 
England the ideal is made the actual — is 
expressed in things more than in words ; 
and in things by which words are trans- 
cended. Milton's "L' Allegro," line as it 
is, is not so fine as the scenery — the crys- 
tallised, embodied poetry — out of which it 
arose. All the delicious rural verse that 
has been written in England is only the 
excess and superflux of her own poetic opu- 
lence : it has rippled from the hearts of her 
l^oets just as the fragrance floats away from 
her hawthorn hedges. At every step of his 
progress the pilgrim through English scenes 
is impressed with this sovereign excellence 
of the accomplished fact, as contrasted 
with any words that can be said in its cele- 
bration. 

Among representative scenes which are 
eloquent with this instructive meaning, — 
scenes easily and pleasurably accessible to 
the traveller, in what Dickens expres- 
sively called "the green, English summer 
weather," — is the region of Windsor. The 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 5 1 

chief features of it have often been de- 
scribed ; the charm that it exercises can 
only be suggested. To see Windsor, more- 
over, is to comprehend, as at a glance, the 
old feudal system, and to feel, in a pro- 
found and special WEiy, the pomp of English 
character and history. More than this : it 
is to rise to that ennobling exaltation which 
always accompanies broad, retrospective 
contemplation of the current of human 
affairs. In this quaint, decorous town — 
nestled at the base of that mighty and mag- 
nificent castle which has been the home of 
princes for more than five hundred years — 
the imaginative mind wanders over vast 
tracts of the past, and beholds, as in a 
mirror, the pageants of chivalry, the coro- 
nations of kings, the strifes of sects, the 
battles of armies, the schemes of statesmen, 
the decay of transient systems, the growth 
of a rational civilisation, and the everlast- 
ing march of thought. Every prospect of 
the region intensifies this sentiment of con- 
templative grandeur. As you look from 
the castle walls your gaze takes in miles and 
miles of blooming countrj^ sprinkled over 
with little hamlets, wherein the utmost 
stateliness of learning and rank is gracefully 
commingled with all that is lovely and 



52 A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 

soothing in rural life. Not far away rise 
the " antique towers " of Eton — 

" Where grateful Science still adores 
Her Henry's holy shade." 

It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry 
was born ; and there he often held his 
court ; and it is in St. George's Chapel that 
his ashes repose. In the dim distance 
stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, aoout 
which Gray was wont to wander, 

" Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's 
shade." 

You recognise now a deeper significance 
than ever before in the "solemn stillness" 
of the incomparable Elegy. The luminous 
twilight mood of that immortal poem — its 
pensive reverie and solemn passion — is in- 
herent in the scene ; and you feel that it 
was there, and there only, that the genius 
of its exceptional author — austerely gentle 
and severely pure, and thus in perfect har- 
mony with its surroundings — could have 
been moved to that sublime outburst of in- 
spiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in 
the midst of your reverie, the mellow organ 
sounds from the chapel of St. George, 
where, under "fretted vault" and over 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 53 

"long-drawn aisle," depend the ghostly, 
mouldering banners of ancient knights — as 
still as the bones of the dead-and-gone 
monarchs that crumble in the crypt beloM'. 
In this church are many of the old kings 
and nobles of England. The handsome and 
gallant Edward the Fourth here found his 
grave ; and near it is that of the accom- 
plished Hastings — his faithful friend, to the 
last and after. Here lies the dust of the 
stalwart, impetuous, and savage Henry the 
Eighth, and here, at midnight, by the light 
of torches, they laid beneath the pavement 
the mangled body of Charles tlie First. 
As you stand on Windsor ramparts, ponder- 
ing thus upon the storied past and the evan- 
escence of " all that beauty, all that wealth 
e'er gave," your eyes rest dreamily on green 
fields far below, through which, under tall 
elms, the brimming and sparkling river 
flows on without a sound, and in which a 
few figures, dwarfed by distance, flit here 
and thei'e, in seeming aimless idleness ; 
while, warned homeward by impending sun- 
set, the chattering birds circle and float 
around the lofty towers of the castle ; and 
delicate perfumes of seringa and jasmine are 
wafted up from dusky, unknown depths at 
the base of its ivied steep. At such an hour 



54 A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 

I stood on those ramparts, and saw the shy 
villages and rich meadows of fertile Berk- 
shire, all red and golden with sunset light ; 
and at such an hour I stood in the lonely- 
cloisters of St. George's Chapel, and heard 
the distant organ sob, and saw the sunlight 
fade up the grey walls, and felt and knew 
the sanctity of silence. Age and death have 
made this church illustrious ; but the spot 
itself has its own innate charm of mystical 
repose. 

" No use of lauthonis ; and in one place lay 
Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday." 

The drive from the front of Windsor Castle 
is through a broad and stately avenue, three 
miles in length, straight as an arrow and 
level as a standing pool ; and this white 
higliway through the green and fragrant sod 
is sumptuoiisly embowered, from end to end, 
with double rows of maguilicent old elms. 
The Windsor avenue, like the splendid 
chestnut grove at Bushey Park, long famous 
among the pageants of rural England, has 
often been described. It is after leaving 
this that the rambler comes upon the rarer 
beauties of Windsor Park and Forest. From 
the far end of the avenue — where, in a 
superb position, the equestrian statue of 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 55 

King George the Third rises on its massive 
pedestal of natural rock, — the road winds 
away, tlirough shaded dell and verdant 
glade, past great gnarled beeches and under 
boughs of elm, and yew, and oak, till its 
silver thread is lost in the distant woods. 
At intervals a branching pathway strays off 
to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foli- 
age — the property of the Crown, and the 
rustic residence of a scion of the royal race. 
In one of these retreats dwelt poor old 
George the Third, in the days of his mental 
darkness ; and the memory of the agonising 
king seems still to cast a shadow on the 
mysterious and melancholy house. They 
show you, under glass, in one of the lodge 
gardens, an enormous grape-vine, owned 
by the Queen — a vine which, from its 
single stalwart trunk, spreads its teeming 
branches, laterally, at least two hundred 
feet in each direction. So come use and 
thrift, hand in hand with romance ! Many 
an aged oak is passed, in your progress, 
round which, "at still midnight," Heme the 
Hunter might still take his ghostly prowl, 
shaking his chain "in a most hideous and 
dreadful manner." The wreck of the veri- 
table Heme's Oak, it is said, was rooted 
out, tocjether with other ancient and de- 



156 A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 

cayed trees, in the time of George the 
Third, and in somewhat too literal fulfil- 
ment of his Majesty's misinterpreted com- 
mand. This great park is fourteen miles 
in circumference and contains nearly four 
thousand acres ; and many of the youngest 
trees that adorn it are more than one hun- 
dred and fifty years old. Far in its heart 
you stroll by Virginia Water — an artificial 
lake, but faultless in its quiet beauty — and 
perceive it so deep and so breezj^ that a 
full-rigged ship-of-war, with armament, can 
navigate its wind-swept, curling billows. 
In the dim groves that fringe its margin 
are many nests wherein pheasants are bred, 
to fall by the royal shot and to supply the 
royal tables : these you may contemplate, 
but not approach. At a point in your walk, 
sequestered and lonely, they have set up 
and skilfully disposed the fragments of a 
genuine ruined temple, brought from the 
remote East — relic, perchance of ' ' Tadmor's 
marble waste," and certainly a most solemn 
memorial of the morning twilight of time. 
Broken arch, storm-stained pillar, and 
shattered column are here shrouded with 
moss and ivy ; and should you chance to 
see them as the evening shadoAVs deepen 
and the evening wind sighs mournfully in 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 57 

the grass, your fancy will not fail to drink 
in the perfect illusion that one of the 
stateliest structures of antiquity has slowly 
crumbled where now its fragments remain. 

*' Quaint" is a descriptive epithet that has 
been much abused ; but it may, with abso- 
lute propriety, be applied to Windsor. The 
devious little streets there visible, and the 
carved and timber-crossed buildings, often 
of great age, are uncommonly rich in the 
expressiveness of imaginative character. 
The emotions and the fancy, equally with 
the sense of necessity and the instinct of 
use, have exercised their influence and 
uttered their spirit in the shaping and 
adornment of the town. While it con- 
stantly feeds the eye — with that pleasing 
irregularity of lines and forms which is so 
delicious and refreshing — it quite as con- 
stantly nurtures the sense of romance which 
ought to play so large a part in all our 
lives, redeeming us from the tyranny of 
the commonplace and intensifying all the 
high feelings and noble aspirations that are 
possible to human nature. England con- 
tains many places like Windsor ; some that 
blend, in even richer amplitude, the ele- 
ments of quaintness, loveliness, and magnifi- 
cence. The meaning of them all is the same ; 



58 A VISIT TO WINDSOR. 

that romance, beauty, and gentleness are for 
ever vital ; that their forces are within our 
own souls, and ready and eager to find their 
way into our thoughts, actions^ and circum- 
stances, and to brighten for every one of 
us the face of every day ; that they ought 
neither to be relegated to the distant and 
the past nor kept for our books and day- 
dreams alone ; but — in a calmer and higher 
mood than is usual in this age of universal 
mediocrity, critical scepticism, and miscel- 
laneous tumult— should be permitted to flow 
forth into our architecture, adornments, and 
customs, to hallow and preserve our an- 
tiquities, to soften our manners, to give us 
tranquillity, patience, and tolerance, to make 
our country loveable for our own hearts, 
and so to enable us to bequeath it, sure of 
love and reverence, to succeeding ages. 



THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. J59 



VI. 

THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

THE American who, having been a careful 
and interested reader of English his- 
tory, visits London for the first time, half 
expects to find the ancient city in a state 
of mild decay ; and he is, consequently, a 
little startled at first, upon realising that 
the Present is quite as vital as ever the Past 
was, and that London antiquity is, in fact, 
swathed in the robes of everyday action 
and very much alive. When, for example, 
you enter Westminster Hall — " the great 
hall of William Rufus " — you are beneath 
one of the most glorious canopies in the 
world — one which was built by Richard the 
Second, whose grave, chosen by himself, is 
in the Abbey, just across the street from 
where you stand. But this old hall is now 
only a vestibule to the Palace of West- 
minster. The Lords and the Commons of 
England, on their way to the Houses of 
Parliament, pass every day over the spot 



6o THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

on which Charles the First was tried and 
condemned, and on wliich occurred the 
trial of Warren Hastings. It is a mere 
thoroughfare — glorious though it be, alike 
in structure and historic renown. The 
Palace Yard, near by, was the scene of 
the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. In 
Bishopsgate Street — where Shakespeare once 
lived — you may find Crosby House ; the 
same to which, in Shakespeare's tragedy, 
the Duke of Gloster requests the retirement 
of Lady Anne. It is a restaurant now ; 
and you may dine in the veritable throne- 
room of Richard the Third. The house of 
Cardinal Wolsey in Fleet Street is now a 
shop. Milton once lived in Golden Lane ; 
and Golden Lane was a sweet and quiet 
spot. It is a dingy and dismal street now, 
and the visitor is glad to get out of it. To- 
day makes use of yesterday, all the world 
over. It is not in London, certainly, that 
you find much of anything — except old 
churches — mouldering in silence, solitude, 
and neglect. 

Those who see every day during the Par- 
liamentary session the mace that is borne 
through the lobby of the House of Com- 
mons, although they are obliged, on every 
occasion, to remove their hats as it passes, 



THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, 6 1 

do not, probably, view that symbol with 
much interest. Yet it is the same mace 
that Oliver Cromwell insulted, when he dis- 
solved the Parliament and cried out, ' ' Take 
away that bauble ! " I saw it one day, on 
its passage to the table of the Commons, 
and was glad to remove the hat of respect 
to what it signifies — the power and majesty 
of the free people of England, The Speaker 
of the House was walking behind it, very 
grand in his wig and gown, and the mem- 
bers trooped in at his heels to secure their 
places by being present at the opening 
prayer. A little later I was provided with 
a seat, in a dim corner, in that august 
assemblage of British Senators, and could 
observe at ease their management of the 
public business. The Speaker was on his 
throne ; the mace was on its table ; the 
hats of the Commons were on their heads ; 
and over this singular, animated, impressive 
scene the waning light of a summer after- 
noon poured softly down, through the high, 
stained, and pictured windows of one of the 
most symmetrical halls in the world. It 
did not happen to be a day of excitement. 
The Irish members had not then begun to 
impede the transaction of business, for the 
sake of drawing attention to the everlasting 



62 THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

wrongs of Ireland. Yet it was a lively day. 
Curiosity on the part of the Opposition, and 
a respectful dubiousness on the part of Her 
Majesty's representatives, were the prevail- 
ing conditions. I had never before heard 
so many questions asked — outside of tlie 
French Grammar — and asked to so little 
purpose. Everybody wanted to know, and 
nobody wanted to tell. Each inquirer took 
off his hat when he rose to ask, and put it 
on again when he sat down to be answered. 
Each governmental sphinx bared his brow 
when he emerged to divulge, and covered it 
again when he subsided without divulging. 
The respect of these interlocutors for each 
other steadily remained, however, of the 
most deferential and considerate descrip- 
tion ; so that — without discourtesy — it was 
impossible not to think of Byron's "mildest 
mannered man that ever scuttled ship or 
cut a throat." Underneath this velvety, 
purring, conventional manner the observer 
could readily discern the fires of passion, 
prejudice, and strong antagonism. They 
make no parade in the House of Commons, 
They attend to their business. And upon 
every topic that is brought before their 
notice they have definite ideas, strong con- 
victions, and settled purposes. The topic of 



THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 63 

Army Estimates upon this day seemed espe- 
cially to arouse their ardour. Discussion of 
this was continually diversified by cries of 
" Oh !" and of " Hear !" and of " Order !" 
and sometimes these cries smacked more of 
derision than of compliment. Many per- 
sons spoke, "but no person spoke well. An 
off-hand, matter-of-fact, shambling method 
of speech would seem to be the fashion in 
the British House of Commons. I remem- 
bered the anecdote that De Quincey tells, 
about Sheridan and the young member who 
quoted Greek. It was easy to perceive how 
completely out of place the sophomore orator 
would be, in that assemblage. Britons like 
better to make speeches than to hear them, 
and they will never be slaves to bad oratory. 
The moment a windy gentleman got the 
floor, and began to read a manuscript re- 
specting the Indian Government, as many 
as forty Commons arose and noisily walked 
out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise 
hailed the moment of his deliverance and 
was glad to escape to the open air. 

Books have been written to describe the 
Palace of Westminster ; but it is observable 
that this structure, however much its mag- 
nificence deserves commemorative applause, 
is deficient, as yet, in the charm which re- 



64 THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

sides in association. Tlie old Palace of 
St. James, with its low, dusky walls, its 
round towers, and its fretted battlements, 
is more impressive, because history has 
freighted it with meaning, and time has 
made it beautiful. But the Palace of West- 
minster is a splendid structure. It covers 
eight acres of ground, on the bank of the 
Thames ; it contains eleven quadrangles and 
five hundred rooms ; and, when its niches for 
statuary have been filled it will contain two 
hundred and twenty-six statues. The monu- 
ments in St. Stephen's Hall — into which you 
pass from Westminster Hall, which has been 
incorporated into the Palace, and is its only 
ancient, and therefore its most interesting 
feature — indicate, very eloquently, what a 
supei'b art gallery this will one day become. 
The statues are the images of Selden, Hamp- 
den, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers, Walpole, 
Chatham, Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and 
Grattan. Those of Mansfield and Grattan 
present, perhaps, the most of character and 
power, making you feel that they are indu- 
bitably accurate portraits, and drawing you 
by the charm of personality. There are 
statues, also, in Westminster Hall, comme- 
morative of the Georges, William and Mary, 
and Anne ; but it is not of these you think, 



THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 65 

nor of any local and everyday object, when 
yoii stand beneath the wonderful roof of 
Richard the Second. Nearly eight hundred 
years "their cloudy wings expand" above 
this fabric, and copiously shed upon it the 
fragrance of old renown. Richard the 
Second was deposed there : Cromwell was 
there installed Lord Protector of England : 
John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and Straf- 
ford were there condemned : and it was 
there that the possible, if not usual, devo- 
tion of woman's heart was so touchingly dis- 
played, by her 

" Whose faith drew strength from death, 
And prayed her Russell up to God." 

No one can realise, without personal ex- 
perience, the number and variety of plea- 
sures accessible to the resident of London. 
These may not be piquant to him who has 
them always within his reach. I met with 
several residents of the British capital who 
had always intended to visit the Tower but 
had never done so. But to the stranger they 
possess a constant and keen fascination. The 
Derby this year [1877], was thought to be 
comparatively a tame race ; but I know of 
one spectator who saw it from the top of the 
Grand Stand, and thought that the scene it 



66 THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

presented was Avonderfully brilliant. The 
sky had been overcast with dull clouds till 
the moment when the race was won ; but 
just as Archer, rising in his saddle, lifted 
his horse forward and gained the goal alone, 
the sun burst forth and shed upon the 
downs a sheen of gold, and lit up all the 
distant hills, and all the far-stretching roads 
that wind away from the region of Epsom 
like threads of silver through the green. 
Carrier-pigeons were instantly launched off 
to London, with the news of the victory 
of Silvio. There was one winner on the 
Grand Stand who had laid bets on Silvio, 
for no other reason than because this horse 
bore the prettiest name in the list. The 
Derby, like Christmas, comes but once a 
year ; but other allurements are almost per- 
ennial. Greenwich, for instance, with its 
white-bait dinner, invites the epicure during 
the best part of the London season. A 
favourite tavern is the Trafalgar — in which 
each room is named after some magnate of 
the old British Navy ; and Nelson, Hardy, 
and Rodney are household words. Another 
cheery place of resort is The Ship. The 
Hospitals are at Greenwich that Dr. John- 
son thought to be too fine for a charity ; 
and back of these — which are ordinary 



THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. Gj 

enongh now, in comparison with modern 
structures erected for a kindred purpose — 
stands the famous Observatory which keeps 
time for Europe. This place is hallowed, 
also, by the grave of Wolfe — to whom, how- 
ever, there is a monument in Westminster 
Abbey. Greenwich sets one thinking of 
Queen Elizabeth, who was born there, who 
often held her court there, and who often 
sailed thence, in her barge, up the river to 
Richmond — her favourite retreat and the 
scene of her last days and her wretched 
death. Few spots can compare with Rich- 
mond, in brilliancy of landscape. This place 
— the Shene of old times — was long a royal 
residence. The woods and meadows that 
you see from the tei-race of the Star and 
Garter Tavern — spread out on a rolling 
plain as far as the eye can reach — sparkle 
like emeralds ; and the Thames dotted with 
little toy-like boats, propelled by the oars 
of coquettishly apparelled rowers, shines 
with all the deep lustre of the black eyes of 
Spain. Pope's rural home is here, in the 
vicinity of Twickenham ; and not far away 
struggles forth to view the "pale shrine" 
of the poet Thomson — whose dust is under 
Richmond Church. As I drove through 
the sweetly sylvan Park of Richmond, 



68 THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER. 

in the late afternoon of a breezy sunnner 
day, and heard the whispering of the great 
ehns, and saw the gentle, trustful deer 
couched at ease in the golden glades, I 
heard all the while, in the quiet chambers 
of thought, the tender lament of Collins — 
which is now a prophecy fulfilled : — 

" Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, 

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest ; 
And oft suspend the dashing oar, 
To bid his gentle spirit rest.* 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH. 69 



VII. 

WARWICK AND KENILWORTH. 

ALL the way from London to Warwick it 
rained ; not heavily, but with a gentle 
fall. The grey clouds hung low over the 
landscape, and softly darkened it ; so that 
meadows of scarlet and emerald, the shining 
foliage of elms, grey turret, nestled cottage, 
and limpid river were as mysterious and 
evanescent as pictures seen in dreams. At 
Warwick the rain had fallen and ceased, and 
the walk from the station to the inn was on 
a road — or on a footpath by the roadside — 
still hard and damp with the water it had 
absorbed. A fresh wind blew from the 
fields, sweet with the rain and fragrant with 
the odour of leaves and flowers. The streets 
of the ancient town — entered through an old 
Norman arch — were deserted and silent. It 
was Sunday when I first came to the country 
of Shakespeare ; and over all the region 
there brooded a sacred stillness peculiar to 
the time and harmonious beyond utterance 



70 WARWICK AND KENILWORTH. 

with the sanctity of the place. As I strive, 
after many days, to call back and to fix in 
words the impressions of that sublime ex- 
perience, the same awe falls upon me now 
which fell upon me then. Nothing else 
upon earth — no natural scene, no relic of the 
past, no pageantry of the present — can vie 
with the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to 
impress, to humble, and to exalt the devout 
spirit that has been nurtured at the foun- 
tain of his transcendent genius, 

A fortunate way to approach Stratford - 
on- Avon is by Warwick and Kenil worth. 
These places are not on a direct line of 
travel ; but the scenes and associations 
which they successively present are such as 
assume a symmetrical order, increase in in- 
terest, and grow to a delightful culmination. 
Objects which Shakespeare himself must 
have seen are still visible there ; and, little 
by little, in contact with these, the pilgrim 
through this haunted region is mentally 
saturated with that atmosphere of serenity 
and romance in which the youth of Shake- 
speare was passed, and by which his works 
and his memory are embalmed. No one 
should come abruptly upon the Poet's 
Home. The mind needs to be prepared for 
the impression that awaits it ; and in this 



WARWICK AND KF.NILWORTH. "J I 

gradual approach it finds preparation, both 
suitable and delicious. The luxuriance of 
the country — its fertile fields, its brilliant 
foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers, its pomp 
of colour and of physical vigour and bloom, 
do not fail to announce, to every mind, 
howsoever heedless, that this is a fit place 
for the birth and nurture of a great man. 
But this is not all. As you stroll in the 
quaint streets of Warwick, as you drive to 
Kenilworth, as you muse in that poetic ruin, 
as you pause in the old graveyard in the 
valley below, as you meditate over the crum- 
bling fragments of the ancient Priory, at 
every step of the way you are haunted by a 
vague sense of an impending grandeur ; you 
are aware of a presence that fills and sancti- 
fies the scene. The emotion that is thus 
inspired is very glorious ; never to be else- 
where felt ; and never to be forgotten. 

The cyclopasdias and the guide-books 
dilate, with much particularity and char- 
acteristic eloquence, upon Warwick Castle 
and other great features of Warwickshire, 
but the attribute which all sucli records 
omit is the atmosphere ; and this, perhaps, 
is rather to be indicated than described. 
The prevailing quality of it is a certain high 
and sweet solemnity — a feeling kindred 



72 WARWICK AND KENILWORTK. 

with the placid, happy melancholy that 
steals over the mind, when, on a sombre 
afternoon in autumn, you stand in the 
churchyard, and listen, amidst rustling 
branches and sighing grass, to the low 
music of distant organ and chanting choir. 
Peace, haunted by romance, dwells here in 
reverie. The great tower of Warwick, 
based in silver Avon and pictured in its 
slumbering waters, seems musing upon the 
centuries over which it has watched, and 
full of unspeakable knowledge and thought. 
The dark and massive gateways of the 
town and the timber-crossed fronts of its 
antique houses live on in the same strange 
dream and perfect repose ; and all along the 
drive to Kenilworth are equal images of rest 
— of a rest in which there is nothing supine 
or sluggish, no element of death or decay, 
but in which passion, imagination, beauty, 
and sorrow, seized at their topmost poise, 
seem crystallised in eternal calm. What 
opulence of splendid life is vital for ever 
in Kenilworth's crumbling ruin, there are 
no words to say. What pomp of royal 
banners ! what dignity of radiant cavaliers ! 
what loveliness of stately and exquisite 
ladies ! what magnificence of banquets ! 
what wealth of pageantry ! what lustre of 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH. 73 

illumination ! The same festal music that 
the old poet Gascoigne heard there, three 
liundred years ago, is still sounding on, to- 
day. The proud and cruel Leicester still 
walks in his vaulted hall. The imperious 
face of the Virgin Queen still from her 
dais looks down on plumed courtiers and 
jewelled dames ; and still the moonlight, 
streaming through the turret-window, falls 
on the white bosom and the great, startled, 
black eyes of Amy Robsart, waiting for her 
lover. The gaze of the pilgrim, indeed, 
rests only upon old, grey, broken walls, 
overgrown with green moss and ivy, and 
pierced by irregular casements through 
which the sun shines, and the winds blow, 
and the rains drive, and the birds fly, 
amidst utter desolation. But silence and 
ruin are here alike eloquent and awful ; 
and, much as the place impresses you by 
what remains, it impresses you far more 
by what has vanished. Ambition, love, 
pleasure, power, misery, tragedy — these are 
gone ; and being gone they are immortal. 
I plucked, in the garden of Kenilworth, 
one of the most brilliant red roses that 
ever grew ; and, as I pressed it to my 
lips, I seemed to touch the lips of that 
superb, bewildering beauty who outweighed 



74 WARWICK AND KENILWORTH. 

England's crown, and whose spirit is the 
everlasting genius of the place. 

There is a row of cottages opposite to 
the ruins of the castle, in which Content- 
ment seems to have made her home. The 
ivy embowers them. The roses cluster 
around their little windows. The green 
sward slopes away, in front, from big, flat 
stones that are embedded in the grassy sod 
before their doors. Down in the valley, 
hard by, your steps stray through an 
ancient graveyard — in which modern hands 
have built a tiny church, with tower, and 
clock, and bell — and past a few fragments 
of a Priory, long since destroyed. At 
many another point, on the roads betwixt 
Warwick and Kenilworth and Stratford, I 
came upon such nests of cosy, rustic quiet 
and seeming happiness. They build their 
country houses low, in England, so that the 
trees overhang them, and the cool, friendly, 
flower-gemmed earth — pai'ent, and stay, and 
bourne of mortal life ! — is tenderly taken 
into their companionship. Here, at Kenil- 
worth, as elsewhere, at such places as 
Marlowe, Henley, Richmond, Maidenhead, 
Cookham, and the region round about 
Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook where 
tired life might be content to lay down 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH. 75 

its burden and enter into its rest. In all 
true love of country — a passion which seems 
to be more deeply felt in England than any- 
where else upon the globe — there is love 
for the literal soil itself : and that sentiment 
in the human heart is equally natural and 
pious which inspires and pei'petuates man's 
desire that where he found his cradle he 
may also find his grave. 

Under a cloudy sky, and through a land- 
scape still wet and shining with recent rains, 
the drive to Stratford was a pleasure so ex- 
quisite that at last it became a pain. Just as 
the carriage reached the junction of the War- 
Avick and Snitterfield roads, a ray of sunshine, 
streaming through a rift in the clouds, fell 
upon the neighbouring hillside, scarlet with 
poppies, and lit the scene as with the glory 
of a celestial benediction. This sunburst, 
neither growing larger nor coming nearer, 
followed all the way to Stratford ; and 
there, on a sudden, the clouds were lifted 
and dispersed, and "fair daylight " flooded 
the whole green country-side. The after- 
noon sun was still high in heaven when I 
alighted at the Red Horse Inn and entered 
the little parlour of Washington Irving. 
They keep the room very much as it was 
when he left it ; for they are proud of his 



76 WARWICK AND KENILWORTII. 

gentle genius and grateful for his commemo- 
rative words. In a corner stands [1877] 
the small, old-fashioned hair-cloth arm- 
chair in which he sat on that night of 
memory and of musing w^hich he has de- 
scribed in The Sketch- Boole. A brass plate 
is affixed to it, bearing his name ; and the 
visitor observes, in token of its age and 
service, that the hair-cloth of its seat is 
considerably worn and frayed. Every 
American pilgrim to Stratford sits in this 
chair ; and looks with tender interest on 
the old fireplace ; and reads the memorials 
of Irving that are hung upon the walls : 
and it is^no small comfort there to reflect 
that our own illustrious countryman — whose 
name will be remembered with honour, as 
long as true literature is prized among men 
— was the first, in modern days, to discover 
the beauties and to interpret the poetry of 
the birthplace of Shakespeare. 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 77 



VIII. 

FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

ONCE again, as it did on that delicious 
summer afternoon which is for ever 
memorable in my life, the golden glory of 
the westering sun burns on the grey spire of 
Stratford Church, and on the ancient grave- 
yard below, — wherein the mossy stones lean 
this way and that, in sweet and orderly 
confusion, — and on the peaceful avenue of 
limes, and on the burnished water of silver 
Avon. The tall, arched, many-coloured 
windows of the church glint in the evening 
light. A cool and fragrant wind is stirring 
the branches and the grass. The small 
birds, calling to their mates, or sporting in 
the wanton pleasure of their airy life, are 
circling over the church roof, or hiding in 
little crevices of its walls. On the vacant 
meadows across the river stretch away the 
long and level shadows of the pompous 
elms. Here and there, upon the river's 
brink, are pairs of what seem lovers, stroll- 



78 FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVOX. 

ing by the reedy marge, or sitting upon the 
low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet- As the 
sun sinks and the dusk deepens, two figures 
of infirm old women, clad in black, pass 
with slow and feeble steps through the 
avenue of limes, and vanish around an 
angle of the church — which now stands all 
in shadow : and no sound is heard but the 
faint rustling of the leaves. 

Once again, as on that sacred night, the 
streets of Stratford are deserted and silent 
under the star-lit sky, and I am standing, 
m the dim darkness, at the door of the 
cottage in which Shakespeare was born. It 
is empty, dark, and still ; and in all the 
neighbourhood there is no stir nor sign of 
life ; but the quaint casements and gables 
of this haunted house, its antique porch, 
and the great timbers that cross its front 
are luminous as with a light of their own, 
so that I see them with perfect distinctness. 
I stand there a long time, and I know that 
I am to remember these sights for ever, as I 
see them now. After a while, with linger- 
ing reluctance, I turn away from this mar- 
vellous spot, and, presently passing through 
a little, winding lane, I walk in the High 
Street of the town, and mark, at tlie end of 
the prospect, the illuminated clock in the 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 79 

tower of the chapel of the Holy Cross. A 
few chance-directed steps bring me to what 
was New Place once, where Shakespeare 
died ; and there again I pause, and long 
remain in meditation, gazing into the en- 
closed garden, where, under screens of 
wire, are certain strange fragments of lime 
and stone. These — which I do not then 
know — are the remains of the foundation of 
Shakespeare's house. The night wanes ; 
and still I walk in Stratford streets ; and 
by and by I am standing on the bridge that 
spans the Avon, and looking down at the 
thick-clustering stars reflected in its black 
and silent stream. At last, under the roof 
of the Red Horse, I sink into a troubled 
slumber, from which very soon a strain of 
celestial music — strong, sweet, jubilant, and 
splendid — awakens me in an instant, and I 
start up in my bed — to find that all around 
me is still as death ; and then, drowsily, 
far-ofif, the bell strikes three, in its weird 
and lonesome tower. 

Every pilgrim to Stratford knows before 
hand, in a general way, what he will there 
behold. Copious and frequent description 
of its Shakespearean associations have made 
the place familiar to all the world. Yet 
these Shakespearean associations keep a per- 



80 FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

ennial freshness, and are equally a surprise 
to the sight and a wonder to the soul. 
Though three centuries old, they are not 
yet stricken with age or decay. The house 
in Henley Street, in which, according to 
accepted tradition, Shakespeare was born, 
has been from time to time lepaired ; and 
so it has been kept sound, without having 
been materially changed from what it was 
in Shakespeare's youth. The kind ladies. 
Miss Caroline Chataway and her sister, who 
now take care of it, and, with so much pride 
and courtesy, show it to the visitor, called 
my attention to a bit of the ceiling of the 
upper chamber — the alleged room of Shake- 
speare's birth — which had begun to sag, 
and had been skilfully mended, with little 
laths. It is in this room that the numerous 
autographs are scrawled all over the ceiling 
and walls. One side of the chimney-piece 
here is called "The Actor's Pillar," so 
richly is it adorned with the names of 
actors ; Edmund Kean's signature being 
among them, and still legible. On one of 
the window-panes, cut with a diamond, is 
the name of "W. Scott;'' and all the 
panes are scratched with signatures — making 
you think of Douglas Jerrold's remark on 
bad Shakespearean commentators, that they 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 8 1 

resemble persons who write on glass with 
diamonds, and obscure the light with a 
multitude of scratches. The floor of this 
room, uncarpeted, and almost snow-white 
with much washing, seems still as hard as 
iron ; yet its boards have been hollowed by- 
wear, and the heads of the old nails, that 
fasten it down, gleam like polished silver. 
You can sit in an antique chair, in a corner 
of this room, if you like, and think unutter- 
able things. There is, certainly, no word 
that can even remotely suggest the feeling 
with which you are there overwhelmed. 
You can sit, also, in the room below, in the 
very seat, in the corner of the wide fire- 
place, that Shakespeare himself must often 
have occupied. They keep but a few sticks 
of furniture in any part of the cottage. One 
room is devoted to Shakespearean curiosities 
— or relics — more or less authentic ; one cf 
which is a schoolboy's form or desk, that 
was obtained from the old grammar-school 
in High Street, now modern in its appoint- 
ments, in which Shakespeare was once a 
pupil. At the back of the cottage, noAV 
isolated from contiguous structures, is a 
pleasant garden, and at one side is a cosy, 
luxurious little cabin — the home of order 
and of pious decorum — for the ladies who 
s. E. F 



82 FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

are custodians of the Shakespeare House. 
If you are a favoured visitor, you may re- 
ceive from this garden, at parting, all the 
flowers, prettily affixed to a sheet of purple- 
edged paper, that poor Ophelia names, in 
the scene of her madness. "There's rose- 
mary, that 's for remembrance : and there 
is pansies, that 's for thoughts : there 's 
fennel for you, and columbines : there 's rue 
for you : there 's a daisy : — I would give 
you some violets, but they withered all 
when my father died." 

The minute knowledge that Shakespeare 
had of plants and flowers, and the loving 
appreciation with which he describes pas- 
toral scenery, are explained to the rambler 
in Stratford by all that he sees and hears. 
There is a walk across the fields to Shottery 
which the poet must often have taken, in 
the days of his courtship of Anne Hatha- 
way. The high-road to the hamlet passes 
through rich meadows and lands teeming 
with grain, flecked everywhere with those 
brilliant scarlet poppies which are so radiant 
and so bewitching in the English landscape. 
To have grown up amidst such surroundings, 
and, above all, to have experienced amidst 
them the passion of love, must have been, 
with Shakespeare, the intuitive acquire- 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AV'^ON, 83 

ment of ample and specific knowledge of 
their manifold beauties. It would be hard 
to find a sweeter rustic retreat than Anne 
Hathaway's cottage is, even now. The tall 
trees embower it ; and over its porches, and 
all along its picturesque, irregular front, and 
on its thatched roof, the woodbine and the 
ivy climb, and there are wild roses and the 
maiden's blush. For the young poet's woo- 
ing no place could be fitter than this ! He 
would always remember it with tender joy. 
They show you, in that cottage, an old 
settle, by the fireside, whereon the lovers 
may have sat together : it formerly stood 
outside the door : and in the rude little 
chamber next the roof, an antique, carved 
bedstead, which Anne HathaM^ay once owned. 
This, it is thought, continued to be Anne's 
home for several years of her married life — 
her husband being absent in London, and 
sometimes coming down to visit her, at 
Shottery. "He was wont," says Aubrey, 
"to go to his native country once a year." 
The last surviving descendant of the Hatha- 
way family — Mrs. Baker — lives in the house 
now, and welcomes with homely hospitality 
the wanderers, from all lands, who seek — in 
a sympathy and reverence most honourable 
to human nature ! — the shrine of Shake- 



84 FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

speare's love. There is one such wanderer 
who will never forget the parting pressure 
of this kind woman's hand, and who has 
never parted with her farewell gift of wood- 
bine and roses fi-om the porch of Anne 
Hathaway's cottage. 

In England it is living, more than writing 
about it, that is esteemed by the best per- 
sons. They prize good writing, of course ; 
but they prize noble living far more. This 
is an ingrained principle, and not an arti- 
ficial habit, and this principle, doubtless, 
was as potent in Shakespeare's age as it is 
to-day. Nothing could be more natural 
than that this great writer should think 
less of his works than of the establishment 
of his home. He would desire, having won 
his fortune, to dwell in his native place, to 
enjoy the companionship and esteem of his 
neighbours, to participate in their pleasures, 
to help them in their troubles, to aid in 
the improvement and embellishment of the 
town, to deepen his hold upon the affections 
of all around him, and to feel that, at last, 
honoured and lamented, his ashes would be 
laid in the village church where he had 
worshipped — 

" Among familiar names to rest, 
And in the places of his youth." 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 85 

It was in 1597, about ten years after he 
went to London, that the poet began to buy 
property in Stratford, and it was about 
eight years after his first purchase that he 
finally settled there, at New Place. This 
mansion was altered by Sir Hugh Clopton, 
who owned it about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, and was destroyed by 
the Rev. Mr. Gastrell, in 1757. There is 
a modern edifice on the estate now ; but 
the grounds, which have been reclaimed, — 
chiefly through the zeal of Mr. Halliwell, — 
are laid out according to the model they are 
supposed to have presented when Shake- 
speare owned them. His lawn, his orchard, 
and his garden are indicated ; and the 
grandson of his mulberry is growing on the 
spot where that famous tree once flourished. 
You can see a part of the foundations of the 
old house. It seems to have had gables, 
and, no doubt, it was made of stone, and 
fashioned with the beautiful curves and 
broken lines of the Tudor architecture. 
They show, upon the lawn, a stone, of con- 
siderable size, which surmounted its door. 
The site — still the most commodious in 
Stratford — is on the corner of High Street 
and Chapel Street ; and on the opposite 
corner stands now, as it has stood for eight 



86 FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, 
with square, dark tower, fretted parapet, 
arched casements, and Norman porch — 
one of the most romantic and picturesque 
little churches in England. It was easy, 
when standing on that storied spot, to 
fancy Shakespeare, in the gloaming of a 
summer day, strolling on the lawn, beneath 
his elms, and listening to the soft and 
solemn music of the chapel organ ; or to 
think of him as stepping forth from his 
study, in the late and lonesome hours of the 
night, and pausing to " count the clock," 
or note " the exhalations whizzing in the 
air." 

The funeral train of Shakespeare, on that 
dark day when it moved from New Place to 
Stratford Church, had but a little way to 
go. The river, surely, must have seemed to 
hush its murmurs, the trees to droop their 
branches, the sunshine to grow dim — as that 
sad procession passed ! His grave is under 
the grey pavement of the chancel, within 
the rail, and his wife and two daughters are 
buried beside him. The pilgrim who reads, 
upon the gravestone itself, those rugged 
lines of grievous entreaty and awful impre- 
cation which guard the poet's rest, feels no 
doubt that he is listening to his living voice 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-OX-AVON. 87 

— for he has now seen the enchanting beauty 
of the place, and he has now felt what pas- 
sionate affection it can inspire. Feeling 
and not manner would naturally have com- 
manded that sudden agonised supplication 
and threat. Nor does such a pilgrim doubt, 
when gazing on the painted bust, above the 
grave, — made by Gerard Johnson, stone- 
cutter, — that he beholds the authentic face 
of Shakespeare. It is not the heavy face of 
the portraits that represent it. There is a 
rapt, transfigured quality in it, which these 
do not convey. It is thoughtful, austere, 
and yet benign. Shakespeare was a hazel- 
eyed man, with auburn hair, and the colours 
that he wore were scarlet and black. Being 
painted, and also being set up at a consider- 
able height on the church wall, the bust does 
not disclose what is sufficiently perceptible in 
a cast from it — that it is, in fact, the copy of a 
mask from the dead face. One of the cheeks 
is a little swollen, and the tongue is slightly 
protruded and is caught between the lips. 
It need not be said that the old theory — that 
the poet was not a gentleman of considera- 
tion in his own time and place — falls utterly 
and for ever from the mind when you stand 
at his grave. No man could have a more 
honourable or sacred spot of sepulture ; and 



88 FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

while it illustrates the pi'ofound esteem of 
the community in which he lived, it testifies 
to the high religious character by which that 
esteem was confirmed. "I commend my 
soul into the hands of God, my Creator, 
hoping, and assuredly believing, through the 
only merits of Jesus Christ, my Sa,viour, to 
be made partaker of life everlasting. " So 
said Shakespeare, i,n his last Will, bowing in 
humble reverence the mightiest mind — as 
vast and limitless in the power to compre- 
hend as to express ! — that ever wore the gar- 
ments of mortality. 

Once again there is a sound of organ 
music, very low and soft, in Stratford 
Church, and the dim light, broken by the 
richly stained windows, streams across the 
dusky chancel, filling the still air with opal 
haze and flooding those grey gravestones 
with its mellow radiance. Not a word is 
spoken ; but, at intervals, the rustle of the 
leaves is audible, in a sighing wind. What 
visions are these, that suddenly fill the 
region ! What royal faces of monarchs, 
proud with power, or pallid with anguish ! 
What sweet, imperial women, gleeful with 
happy youth and love, or wide-eyed and 
rigid in tearless woe ! What warriors, with 
serpent diadems, defiant of death and hell ! 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFOIID-ON-AVOX. 89 

The mournful eyes of Hamlet ; the wild 
countenance of Lear ; Ariel with his harj), 
and Prospero with his wand ! Here is no 
death ! All these, and more, are immortal 
shapes ; and he that made them so, though 
his mortal part be but a handful of dust in 
yonder crypt, is a glorious angel beyond the 
stars ! 



90 LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 

THOSE persons upon whom the spirit of 
the past has power — and it has not 
power upon every mind ! — are aware of the 
mysterious charm that invests certain fami- 
liar spots and objects, in all old cities. 
London, to observers of this class, is a never- 
ending delight. Modern cities, for the most 
part, reveal a definite and rather a common- 
place design. Their main avenues are par- 
allel. Their shorter streets bisect their main 
avenues. They are diversified with rect- 
angular squares. Their configuration, in 
brief, suggests the sapient, utilitarian fore- 
thought of the land-surveyor and civil en- 
gineer. The ancient British capital, on the 
contrary, is the expression — slowly and often 
nai'rowly made — of many thousands of char- 
acters. It is a city that has happened — and 
the stroller through the old part of it comes 
continually upon the queerest imaginable 
alleys, courts, and nooks. Not far from 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS, Ql 

Drury Lane Theatre, for instance, hidden 
away in a clump of dingy houses, is a dismal 
little graveyaixl — the same that Dickens 
has chosen, in his novel of Bleak House, 
as the sepulchre of little Jo's friend, the first 
love of the unfortunate Lady Dedlock. It 
is a doleful spot, draped in the robes of faded 
sorrow, and crowded into the twilight of ob- 
scurity by the thick-clustering habitations of 
men. The Cripplegate Church, — St. Giles's 
— a less lugubrious spot, and somewhat less 
difficult of access, is, nevertheless, strangely 
sequestered, so that it also affects the obser- 
vant eye as equally one of the surprises of 
London. I saw it, for the first time, on a 
grey, sad Sunday, a little before twilight, 
and when the service was going on within its 
venerable, historic walls. The footsteps of 
John Milton were often on the threshold of 
the Cripplegate, and his grave is in the nave 
of that ancient church. A simple flat stone 
marks that sacred spot, and many a heedless 
foot tramples over that hallowed dust. From 
(jolden Lane, which is close by, you can see 
the tower of this church ; and, as you walk 
from the place where Milton lived to the 
place where his ashes repose, you seem, with 
a solemn, awe-stricken emotion, to be actu- 
ally following in liis funeral train. The 



92 LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 

grave of Daniel De Foe, for ever memorable 
as the author of the great and wonderful 
romance of Robinson Crusoe, is also in the 
Cripplegate ; and at its altar occurred the 
marriage of Oliver Cromwell. I remem- 
bered — as I stood there and conjured up 
that scene of golden joy and hope — the place 
of the Lord Protector's coronation in West- 
minster Hall ; the place, still marked, in 
Westminster Abbey, where his body was 
buried ; and old Temple Bar, on which [if 
not on Westminster Hall itself] his muti- 
lated corse was finally exposed to the blind 
rage of the fickle populace. A little time 
— a very little time— serves to gather up 
equally the happiness and the anguish, the 
conquest and the defeat, the greatness and 
the littleness of human life, and to cover 
them all with silence. 

But not always with oblivion. These 
quaint churches, and many other moulder- 
ing relics of the past, in London, are haunted 
with associations that never can perish out 
of remembrance. In fact the whole of 
the old city impresses you as densely in- 
vested with an atmosphere of human experi- 
ence, dark, sad, and lamentable. Walking, 
alone, in ancient quarters of it, after mid- 
night, I was aware of the oppressive sense 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 93 

of tragedies that have been acted, and 
misery that has been endured, in its dusky 
streets and melancholy houses. They do 
not err who say that the spiritual life of 
man leaves its influence in the physical ob- 
jects by which he is surrounded. Night- 
walks in London will teach you that, if 
they teach you nothing else. I went more 
than once into Brooke Street, Holborn, and 
traced the desolate footsteps of poor Thomas 
Chatterton to the scene of his self-murder 
and agonised, pathetic, deplorable death. 
It is more than a century [1770], since that 
"marvellous boy" was driven to suicide 
by neglect, hunger, and despair. They 
are tearing down the houses on one side 
of Brooke Street now [1877] ; it is doubt- 
ful which house was No. 4, in the attic 
of which Chatterton died, and doubtful 
whether it remains : his grave — a pauper's 
grave, which was made in a M'orkhouse 
burial-ground, in Shoe Lane, long since ob- 
literated — is unknown ; but his presence 
hovers about that region ; his strange and 
touching story tinges its squalor and its 
commonness with the mystical moonlight of 
romance ; and his name is blended with it 
for ever. On another night I walked from 
St. James's Palace to Whitehall (the York 



94 LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 

Place of Cardinal "Wolsey), and viewed the 
ground that Charles the First must have 
traversed, on his way to the scaffold. The 
story of the slaughter of that king, always 
sorrowful to remember, is very grievous to 
consider, when you realise, upon the actual 
scene of his ordeal and death, his exalted 
fortitude and his bitter agony. It seemed 
as if I could almost hear his voice, as it 
sounded on that fateful morning, asking 
that his body might be more warmly clad, 
lest, in the cold January air, he should 
shiver, and so, before the eyes of his ene- 
mies, should seem to be trembling with 
fear. The Puritans, having brought this 
poor man to the place of execution, kept 
him in suspense from early morning till 
after tM^o o'clock in the day, while they de- 
bated over a proposition to spare his life — 
upon any condition they might choose to 
make — which had been sent to them by his 
son, Prince Charles. Old persons were alive 
in London, not very long ago, who remem- 
l-jcred having seen, in their childhood, the 
window, in the end of Whitehall, through 
which the doomed monarch walked forth to 
the block. It was long ago walled up, and 
the palace has undergone much alteration 
since the days of the Stuarts ; but the spot, 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 95 

in the rear of Whitehall, where the king 
died, is marked to this day, in a manner 
most tenderly significant. A bronze statue 
of his son, James the Second, stands in this 
place. It is by Ronbiliac (whose marbles are 
numerous, in the Abbey and elsewhere in 
London, and whose grave is in St. Martin's 
Church), and it is one of the most graceful 
works of that spirited sculptor. The figure 
is finely modelled. The face is downcast 
and full of grief and reproach. The right 
hand points, with a truncheon, toward 
the earth. It is impossible to mistake 
the ruminant, melancholy meaning of this 
memorial ; and, equally, it is impossible, to 
walk without both thought that instructs 
and emotion that elevates through a city 
which thus abounds with traces of momen- 
tous incident and representative experience. 
The literary pilgrim in London has this 
double advantage — that while he communes 
Mith the past he may enjoy in the present. 
Yesterday and to-day are commingled here, 
in a way that is almost ludicrous. When 
you turn from Roubiliac's statue of James 
your eyes rest upon the retired house of 
Disraeli. If you walk past Whitehall, to- 
ward the Palace of Westminster, some 
friend may chance to tell you how the 



96 LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 

great Duke of Wellington walked there, in 
the feebleness of his age, from the Horse 
Guards to the House of Lords ; and with 
what pleased complacency the old warrior 
used to boast of his skill in threading a 
crowded thoroughfare, — unaware that the 
police, acting by particular orders, were 
wont to protect his reverend person from 
errant cabs and pushing pedestrians. As 
I strolled, one day, past Lambeth Palace, 
it happened that the palace gates were 
suddenly iinclosed, and that His Grace 
the Archbishop of Canterbury came riding 
forth, on horseback, from this Episcopal 
residence, and pranced away toward the 
House of Lords. It is the same arched 
gateway through which, in other days, 
passed out the stately train of Wolsey. It 
is the same towered palace that Queen 
Elizabeth must have looked upon as her 
barge swept past, on its watery track to 
Richmond. It is for ever associated with 
the memory of the great Thomas Cromwell. 
In the church, hard by, rest the ashes of 
men distinguished in the most diverse direc- 
tions—Jackson, the clown; and Tenison, 
the archbishop, the " honest, prudent, labo- 
rious, and benevolent" pi-imate of William 
the Third, who was thought worthy to sue- 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 97 

ceed in office the illustrious Tillotson. The 
cure of souls is sought here with just as 
vigorous energy as when Tillotson wooed by 
his goodness and charmed by his winning 
eloquence. Not a great distance from this 
spot you come upon the college at Dulwich 
that Edward Alleyn founded, in the time of 
Shakespeare, and that still subsists upon 
the old actor's endowment. It is said that 
Alleyn — who was a man of fortune, and 
whom a contemporary epigram styles the 
best actor of his day — gained the most of 
his money by the exhibition of bears. But, 
howsoever gained, he made a good use of it. 
His tomb is in the centre of the college. 
Here may be seen one of the best picture- 
galleries in England. One of the cherished 
paintings in this collection is the famous 
portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mrs. 
Siddons as the Tragic Muse — remarkable 
for its colour, and splendidly expositive 
of the boldness of feature, brilliancy of 
countenance, and stately gi-ace of posture 
for Avhich its original was distinguished. 
Another represents two renowned beauties 
of their day — the Linley sisters — who be- 
came ]Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickel. You 
do not wonder, as you look upon these fair 
faces, sparkling with health, arch with 



98 LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS. 

merriment, lambent with sensibility, and 
soft with goodness and feeling, that Sheridan 
should have fought duels for such a prize 
as the lady of his love ; or that these fasci- 
nating creatures, favoured alike by the 
Graces and the Muse, should, in their 
gentle lives, have been, "like Juno's swans, 
coupled and inseparable." Mary, Mrs. 
Tickel, died first ; and Moore, in his Life 
of Sheridan, has preserved a lament for her, 
written by Eliza, Mrs. Sheridan, which — 
for deep, true sorrow, and melodious elo- 
quence—is almost worthy to be named with 
Thomas Tickel's monody on Addison, or 
Cowper's memorial lines on his mother's 
picture : — 

" Shall all the wisdom of the world combined 
Erase thy image, Mary, from my mind, 
Or bid me hope from others to receive 
The fond affection thou alone couldst give ? 
Ah no, my best beloved, thou still shalt be 
My friend, my sistei", all the world to me !" 

Precious also among the gems of the 
Dulwich gallery are certain excellent speci- 
mens of the gentle, dreamj^ mood of Murillo. 
The pilgrim passes on, by a short drive, to 
Sydenham, and dines at the Crj^stal Palace 
— and still he finds the faces of the past and 



LONDON NOOKS AND COKNERS. 99 

the present confronted, in a manner that is 
ahnost comic. Nothing could be more aptly 
representative of the practical, showy phase 
of the spirit of to-day than is this enormous, 
opulent, and glittering ' ' palace made of 
windows." Yet I saw here the carriage in 
which Napoleon Buonaparte used to drive, 
at St. Helena — a vehicle as sombre and 
ghastly as were the broken fortunes of its 
death-stricken master ; and, sitting at a 
table close by, I saw the son of Buonaparte's 
great defender, William Hazlitt. 

It was a grey and misty evening. The 
plains below the palace terraces were veiled 
in shadow, through which, here and there, 
twinkled the lights of some peaceful villa. 
Far away the spires and domes of London, 
dimly seen, pierced the city's nightly pall 
of smoke. It M'as a dream too sweet to 
last. It ended when all the illuminations 
were burnt out ; when the myriads of red 
and green and yellow stars had fallen ; and 
all the silver fountains had ceased to play. 



RELICS OF LORD BYRON. 



X. 

RELICS OF LORD BYRON. 

THE Byron Memorial Loan Collection, 
which was displayed at the Albert 
^Memorial Hall, for a short time in the 
summer of 1877, did not attract much atten- 
tion. Yet it was a vastly impressive show 
of relics. The catalogue names seventy- 
four objects, and thirty-nine designs for a 
monument to Byron. The design which 
has been chosen presents a seated figure, of 
the young sailor-boy type. The right hand 
supports the chin ; the left, resting on the 
left knee, holds an open book and a pencil. 
The dress consists of a loose shirt, open at 
the collar and down the bosom, a flowing 
neckcloth, and wide, sailor-like trousers. 
Byron's dog, Boatswain — commemorated in 
the well-known invidious epitaph — 

' To mark a friend's remains these stones arise, 
I never knew but one, and here he lies " — 

is shown, in effigy, at the poet's feet. The 
treatment of the subject, in this model, 



RELICS OF LORD BYRON. lOJ 

certainly deserves to be called free, but the 
general effect of the work is finical. The 
statue will, probably, be popular ; but it 
will give no adequate idea of the man. 
Byron was both massive and intense ; and 
this image is no more than the usual hero 
of nautical romance. [It was dedicated, in 
London, in May 1880.] 

It was the treasury of relics, however, 
and not the statuary, that more attracted 
notice. The relics were exhibited in three 
glass cases, exclusive of large portraits. It 
is impossible, by written words, to make 
the reader — supposing him to revere this 
great poet's genius, and to care for his 
memory — feel the thrill of emotion that was 
aroused by actual sight, and almost actual 
touch, of objects so intimately associated 
with the living Byron. Five pieces of his 
hair were shown, one of which was cut off, 
after his death, by Captain Trelawny — the 
remarkable gentleman who says that he un- 
covered the legs of the corse, in order to 
ascertain the nature and extent of their 
deformity. All these locks of hair are 
faded, and all present a mixture of grey and 
brown. Byron's hair was not, seemingly, of 
a fine texture, and it appears to have turned 
grey early in life. These ti-esses were lent 



102 RELICS OF LORD BYRON. 

to the exhibition by Lady Dorchester, Mr. 
John Murray, the Rev. H. M. Robinson, 
D.D. , and E. J. Trelawny. A strangely 
interesting memorial was a little locket of 
plain gold, shaped like a heart, which 
Byron habitually wore. Near to this was 
the crucifix found in his bed at Misso- 
longhi, after his death. It is about ten 
inches long and is made of ebony. A small 
bronze figure of Christ is displayed upon it, 
and at the feet of this figure are cross-bones 
and a skull, of the same metal. A glass 
beaker, which Byron gave to his butler, in 
1815, attracted attention by its portly size, 
and, to the profane fancy, hinted that his 
lordship had formed a liberal estimate of 
that butler's powers of suction. Four articles 
of head-gear occupied a prominent place in 
one of the cabinets. Two are helmets that 
Byron wore when he was in Greece, in 1824 
— and very queer must have been his ap- 
pearance when he wore them. One is light 
blue, the other dark green ; both are faded ; 
both are fierce with brass ornaments and 
barbaric with brass scales like those of a 
enake. A comelier object is the poet's 
*' boarding-cap" — a leathern slouch, turned 
up with green vehet and studded with 
brass nails. Many small articles of Byron's 



RELICS OF LORD BYRON. I03 

property were scattered through the cases. 
A corpulent little silver watch, with Arabic 
numerals upon its face, and a meerschaum 
pipe, not much coloured, were among them. 
The cap that he sometimes wore, during 
the last years of his life, and that is de- 
picted in the well-known sketch of him by 
Count D'Orsay was exhibited, and so was 
D'Orsay's portrait. The cap is of green 
velvet, not much tarnished, and is en- 
circled by a gold band and faced by an ugly 
visor. The face in the sketch is super- 
cilious and cruel. A better, and obviously 
truer sketch is that made by Cattermole, 
which also was in this exhibition. Strength 
in despair, and a dauntless spirit that shines 
through the ravages of irremediable suffer- 
ing, are the qualities of this portrait ; and 
they make it marvellously effective. Thor- 
waldsen's fine bust of B3a'on, made for 
Hobhouse, and also the celebrated Phillips 
portrait — which Scott said was the best 
likeness of Byron ever painted — occupied 
places in this group. The copy of the New 
Testament which Lady Byron gave to her 
husband, and which he, in turn, presented 
to Lady Caroline Lamb, was there, and is 
a pocket volume, bound in black leather, 
with the inscription, "From a sincere and 



104 RELICS OF LORD BYRON. 

anxious friend," written, in a stiff, formal 
hand, across the fly-leaf. A gold ring that 
the poet constantly wore, and the collar of 
his dog Boatswain — a discoloured band of 
brass, with sharply jagged edges — should 
also be named, as among the most inter- 
esting of the relics. 

But the most remarkable objects of all 
were the manuscripts. These comprise the 
original draft of the third canto of " Childe 
Harold," written on odd bits of paper, 
during Byron's journey from London to 
Venice, in 1816 ; the first dx-aft of the 
fourth canto, together with a clear copy of 
it; the notes to "Marino Faliero ; " the 
concluding stage directions — much scrawled 
and blotted — in "Heaven and Earth;" a 
document concerning the poet's matrimonial 
trouble ; and about fifteen of his letters. 
The passages seen are those beginning 
'* Since my young days of passion, joy, or 
pain ;" "To bear unhurt what time cannot 
abate;" and, in canto fourth, the stanzas 
118 to 129 inclusive. The writing is free 
and strong, and it still remains entirely 
legible, although the paper is yellow with 
age. Altogether, these relics were touch- 
ingly significant of the strange, dark, sad 
career of a wonderful man. Yet, as al- 



RELICS OF LORD BYRON. I05 

ready said, they attracted but little notice. 
The memory of Byron seems darkened, a» 
with the taint of lunacy, "He did strange 
things," one Englishman said to me ; " and 
there was something queer about him. " The 
London house, in Avhich he was born, in 
Holies Street, Cavendish Square, is marked 
with a tablet, — according to a custom insti- 
tuted by a society of arts. Two houses iu 
which he lived, No. 8 St. James Street, 
near the old Palace, and No. 139 Piccadilly 
are not marked. The house of his birth is 
occupied by a descendant of Elizabeth Fry, 
the ' ' philanthropist. ' ' 

The custom of marking the houses associ- 
ated with great names is, obviously, a good 
one, and it ought to be adopted in our coun- 
try. Two buildings here, one in West- 
minster and one in the grounds of the South 
Kensington Museum, bear the name of 
Franklin ; and I also saw memorial tablets 
to Dry den and Burke in Gerrard Street, to 
Mrs. Siddons in Baker Street, to Sir Joshua 
Reynolds and to Hogarth in Leicester 
Square, to Garrick in the Adelphi Terrace, 
to Louis Napoleon, and to manj^ other re- 
nowned individuals. The room that Sir 
Joshua occupied as a studio is now an 
auction mart. The stone stairs leading up 



106 RELICS OF LORD BYRON. 

to it are much worn, but remain as they 
were when, it may be imagined, Burke, 
Johnson, Goldsmith, Langton, Beauelerk, 
and Boswell walked there, on many a fes- 
tive night in the old times. 

It is a breezy, slate-coloured evening in 
July. I look from the window of a London 
house which fronts a spacious park. Those 
great elms, which Birket Foster draws so 
Avell, and which, in their wealth of foliage 
and irregular and pompous expanse of limb, 
are finer than all other trees of their class, 
fill the prospect, and nod and murmur in 
the wind. Through a rift in their heavy- 
laden boughs is visible a long vista of green 
field, in which many children are at play. 
Their laughter, and the rustle of leaves, 
with now and then the click of a horse's 
hoof upon the road near by, make up the 
music of this hallowed hour. The sky is a 
little overcast, but not gloomy. As I muse 
upon this delicious scene the darkness 
slowly gathers, the stars come out, and 
presently the moon rises, and blanches the 
meadow with silver light. Such has been 
the English summer, with scarce a hint of 
either heat or storm. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. IO7 



XI. 

WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

IT is strange that the life of the past, 
in its unfamiliar remains and fading 
traces, should so far surpass the life of the 
present, in impressive force and influence. 
Human characteristics, although manifested 
under widely different conditions, were the 
same in old times that they are now. It is 
not in them, surely, that we are to seek for 
the mysterious charm which hallows ancient 
objects and the historical antiquities of the 
world. There is many a venerable, weather- 
stained church in London, at sight of which 
your steps falter and your thoughts take a 
wistful, melancholy tui'n — though then you 
may not know either who built it, or who 
has worshipped in it. or what dust of the 
dead is mouldering in its vaults. The spirit 
which thus instantly possesses and controls 
you is not one of association, but is inherent 
in the place. Time's shadow on the works 
of man, like moonlight on a landscape, gives 



I08 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

only graces to the view — tingeing them, the 
while, with sombre sheen — and leaves all 
blemishes in darkness. This may suggest 
the reason that relics of bygone years so 
sadly please and strangely awe iis, in the 
passing moment ; or, it may be that we in- 
voluntarily contrast their apparent perman- 
ence with our own evanescent mortality, 
and so are dejected with a sentiment of 
dazed helplessness and solemn gi'ief. This 
sentiment it is — allied to bereaved love and 
a natural wish for remembrance after death 
— that has filled Westminster Abbey, and 
many another holy mausoleum, with sculp- 
tured memorials of the departed ; and this, 
perhaps, is the subtle power that makes us 
linger beside them, "with thoughts beyond 
the reaches of our souls.'' 

When the gentle angler Izaak Walton 
went into Westminster Abbey to visit the 
grave of Casaubon, he scratched his initials 
on the scholar's monument, where the record, 
"I. W., 1658," may still be read by the 
stroller in Poets' Corner. One might well 
wish to follow that example, and even thus 
to associate his name with the great cathe- 
dral. And not in pride, but in humble 
reverence ! Here if anywhere on earth self- 
assertion is rebuked and human eminence 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. I09 

set at nought. Among all the impressions 
that crowd upon the mind in this wonder- 
ful place that which oftenest recurs and 
longest remains is the impression of man's 
individual insignificance. This is salutary, 
but it is also dark. There can be no enjoy- 
ment of the Abbey till, after much com- 
munion with the spirit of the place, your 
soul is soothed by its beauty rather than 
overwhelmed by its majesty, and your mind 
ceases from the vain effort to grasp and in- 
terpret its tremendous meaning. You can- 
not long endure, and you never can express, 
the sense of grandeur that is inspired by 
Westminster Abbey ; but, when at length 
its shrines and tombs and statues become 
familiar, when its chapels, aisles, arches, and 
cloisters are grown companionable, and you 
can stroll and dream undismayed ' ' through 
rows of warriors and through walks of 
kings," there is no limit to the pensive 
memories they awaken and the poetic 
fancies they prompt. In this church are 
buried, amidst generations of their nobles 
and courtiers, fourteen monarchs of England 
— beginning with the Saxon Sebert and end- 
ing with George the Second. Fourteen 
Queens rest here, and many children of the 
royal blood who never came to the throne. 



no WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

Here, confronted in a haughty rivahy of 
solemn pomp, rise the equal tombs of 
Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. Queen 
Eleanor's dust is here, and here, too, is the 
dust of the grim Queen Mary. In one little 
chapel you may pace, Avith but half a dozen 
steps, across the graves of Charles the 
Second, William and Mary, and Queen Anne 
and her consort Prince George. At the 
tomb of Henry the Fifth you may see the 
helmet, shield, and saddle which were worn 
by that valiant young king at Agincourt ; 
and close by — on the tomb of Margaret 
Woodeville, daughter of Edward the Fourth 
— the sword and shield that were borne, 
in royal state, before the great Edward the 
Third, five hundred years ago. The princes 
whom Richard murdered in the Tower are 
commemorated here by an altar, set up by 
Charles the Second, whereon the inscription 
— blandly and almost humorously oblivi- 
ous of the incident of Cromwell — states that 
it was erected in the thirtieth year of 
Charles's reign. Richard the Second, de- 
posed and assassinated, is here entombed ; 
and within a few feet of him are the relics , 
of his uncle, the able and powerful Duke 
of Gloucester, whom treacherously he en- 
snared, and betrayed to death. Here also, 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Ill 

huge, rough, and grey, is the stone sarco- 
phagus of Edward the First, which, when 
opened, years ago, disclosed the skeleton 
of departed majesty, still perfect, wearing 
robes of gold tissue and crimson velvet, and 
having a crown on the head and a sceptre in 
the hand. So sleep, in jewelled darkness and 
gaudy decay, what once were monarchs ! 
And all around are great lords, sainted pre- 
lates, famous statesmen, renowned soldiers, 
and illustrious poets. Burleigh, Pitt, Fox, 
Burke, Canning, Newton, Barrow, Wilber- 
force — names for ever glorious ! — are here en- 
shrined in the grandest sepulchre on earth. 
The interments that have been effected 
in and around the Abbey, since the remote 
age of Edward the Confessor, must number 
thousands ; but only about 600 are named 
in the guide-books. In the south transept, 
which is Poets' Corner, rest Chaucer, 
Spenser, Drayton, Cowley, Dryden, Beau- 
mont, Davenant, Prior, Gay, Congreve, 
Rowe, Dr. Johnson, Campbell, Macaulay, 
and Dickens. ^Memorials to many other poets 
and writers have been rangad on the adjacent 
walls and pillars ; but these are among the 
authors that were actually bui'ied in this 
place. Ben Jonson is not here, but — in 
an upright posture, it is said — under the 



112 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

north aisle of the Abbey ; Addisoii is in the 
chapel of Henry the Seventh, at the foot 
of the monument of Charles Montague, 
the great Earl of Halifax; and Bulwer is 
in the chapel of Saint Edmund. Garrick, 
Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Handel, 
Parr, Sir Archibald Campbell, and the once 
so mighty Duke of Argyle are almost side 
by side ; while, at a little distance, sleep 
Anne of Cleves, the divorced wife of Henry 
the Eighth, and Anne Neville, Queen of 
Eichard the Third. Betterton and Spranger 
Barry are in the cloisters — where may be 
read in four little words the most touching 
of all the epitaphs in the Abbey: "Jane 
Lister — dear child." There are no monu- 
ments to either Byron, Shelley, Swift, 
Pope, Bolingbroke, Keats, Cowper, Moore, 
or Young ; but Mason and Shadwell are 
commemorated ; and Barton Booth is splen- 
didly inurned ; while hard by, in the 
cloisters, a place was found for Mrs. Cibber, 
Tom Brown, Anne Bracegirdle, and Aphra 
Behn. The destinies have not always been 
stringently fastidious as to the admission of 
lodgers to this sacred ground. The pilgrim 
is startled by some of the names that he 
linds in Westminster Abbey, and pained by 
reflection on the absence of some that he 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. II3 

will seek in vain. Yet he will not fail t<i 
moralise, as lie strolls in Poets' Corner, 
upon the inexorable justice with which time 
repudiates fictitious reputations and twines 
the laurel on only the worthiest brows. In 
well-nigh five hundred years of English 
literature there have lived only about a 
hundred and ten poets whose names survive 
in any needed chronicle ; and not all of 
these possess life, outside of the library. To 
muse over the literary memorials in the 
Abbey is also to think upon the seeming 
caprice of chance with which the graves of 
the British poets have been scattered far 
and wide throughout the land. Gower, 
Fletcher, and Massinger (to name but a 
few of them) rest in Southwark ; Sydney 
and Donne in St. Paul's Cathedral ; More 
(his head, that is, while his body moulders 
in the Tower Chapel) at Canterbury ; 
Drummond in Lasswade church ; Dorset 
at Withyham, in Sussex ; Waller at Beacons- 
field ; Wither, unmarked, in the church 
of the Savoy ; Milton in the church of 
the Cripplegate ; Swift at Dublin, in St, 
Patrick's Cathedral ; Young at Welwyn ; 
Pope at Twickenham ; Thomson at Rich- 
mond ; Gray at Stoke-Pogis ; Watts in Bun- 
hill-Fields ; Collins at Chichester ; Cowper 



114 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

in Dereham church ; Goklsmith in the 
garden of the Temple ; Savage at Bristol ; 
Burns at Dumfries ; Rogers at Hornsey ; 
Crabbe at Trowbridge ; Scott in Dryburgh 
Abbey ; Coleridge at Highgate ; Byron in 
Hucknall church, near Nottingham ; Moore 
at Bromham ; Montgomery at Sheffield ; 
Heber at Calcutta ; Southey in Crossthwaite 
churchyard, near Keswick ; "Wordsworth 
and Hai-tley Coleridge side by side in the 
churchyard of Grasmere ; and Clough at 
Florence — whose lovely words may here 
speak for all of them — 

" One port, methought, alike they sought, 
One purpose held, where'er they fare : 
O bounding breeze, rushing seas, 
At last, at last, imite them there I " 

But it is not alone in the great Abbey 
that the rambler in London is impressed by 
poetic antiquity and touching historic asso- 
ciation — always presuming that he has been 
a reader of English literature, and that his 
reading has sunk into his mind. Little 
things, equally with great ones, commingled 
in a medley, luxuriant and delicio\is, so 
people the memory of such a pilgrim that 
all his walks will be haunted. The London 
of to-day, to be sure (as may be seen in 



WESTMINSTEK ABBEY 215 

Macaulay's famous Third Chapter, and in 
Scott's Fortunes of Nigel), is very little like 
even the London of Charles the Second, 
when the great fire had destroyed 89 
churches and 13,000 houses, and when 
what is now Regent Street was a rural soli- 
tude, in which sportsmen sometimes shot 
the woodcock. Yet, though miich of the 
old capital has vanished, and more of it 
has been changed, many remnants of its 
historic past exist, and many of its streets 
and houses are fraught with a delightful, 
romantic interest. It is not forgotten that 
sometimes the charm resides in the eyes 
that see, quite as much as in the object that 
is seen. The storied spots of London may 
not be appreciable by all who look upon 
them every day. The cab-drivers in the 
region of Kensington Palace Road may 
neither regard, nor even notice, the house 
in which Thackeray lived and died. The 
shop-keepers of old Bond Street may, 
perhaps, neitlier care nor know that in 
this famous avenue was enacted the woful 
death-scene of Laurence Sterne. The Bow 
Street runners are quite unlikely to think 
of Will's Coffee House, and Dryden, or 
Button's, and Addison, as they pass the sites 
of those vanished haunts of wit and revelry 



Il6 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

in the days of Queen Anne. The fashion- 
able lounger through Berkeley Square, when 
perchance he pauses at the corner of Bruton 
Street, will not discern Colley Gibber, in 
wig and ruffles, standing at the parlour 
window and drumming with his hands on 
the frame. The casual passenger, halting 
at the Tavistock, will not remember that 
this was once Macklin's Ordinary, and so 
conjure up the iron visage and ferocious 
aspect of the first great Shylock of the 
British stage, formally obsequious to his 
guests, or striving to edify them, despite 
the banter of the volatile Foote, with dis- 
course upon "the Causes of Duelling in 
Ii'eland." The Barbican does not to every 
one summon the austere memory of Milton ; 
nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of 
Chatterton ; nor Tower Hill arouse the 
gloomy ghost of Otway ; nor Hampstead 
lure forth the sunny figure of Steele and the 
passionate face of Keats ; nor old North- 
ampton Street suggest the burly presence of 
"rare Ben Jonson ; " nor opulent Kensington 
revive the stately head of Addison ; nor a 
certain window in Wellington Street re- 
veal in fancy's picture the rugged linea- 
ments and splendid eyes of Dickens. Yet 
London never disappoints ; and, for him 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. II7 

who knows and feels its history, these asso- 
ciations, and hundreds like to these, make 
it populous with noble or strange or pathetic 
figures, and diversify the aspect of its vital 
present with pictures of an equally vital 
past. Such a wanderer discovers that in 
this vast capital there is literally no end to 
the themes that are to stir his imagination, 
touch his heart, and broaden his mind. 
Soothed already by the equable English 
climate and the lovely English scenery, he 
is aware now of an influence in the solid 
English city that turns his intellectual life 
to perfect tranquillity. He stands amidst 
achievements that are finished, careers that 
are consummated, great deeds that are 
done, great memories that are immortal ; 
he views and comprehends the sum of all 
that is possible to human thought, passion, 
and labour ; and then, — high over mighty 
London, above the dome of St. Paul's 
Cathedral, piercing the clouds, greeting the 
sun, drawing into itself all the tremendous 
life of the great city and all the meaning of 
its past and present, — the golden cross of 
Christ ! 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 



XII. 

THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

" Others abide our qtiestioii. Thou art free. 
We ask ajid ask : thou sinilest and art still, 
Out-toppiftg knowledge. For the loftiest hill 
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty, 
Plantitig his steadfast footsteps in the sea, 
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling- 
place. 
Spares but the clotcdy border of his base 
To the foiled searchiiig of mortality. 
And thou, who didst the stars and stmbeanis 

hiow. 
Self -schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self- 
secure, 
Didst zualk on earth jingucssed at. Better so ! 
All pains the immortal spirit must endure. 
All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow. 
Find their sole voice i?i that victorious brow.'" 
—Matthew Arnold. 

IT is the everlasting glory of Stratford- 
upou-Avon that it was the birthplace 
of Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of 
Warwickshire, whicli has been called ' ' the 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. II9 

garden of England," it nestles cosily in an 
atmosphere of tranquil loveliness, and is 
surrounded, indeed, with everything that 
soft and gentle rural scenery can afford to 
soothe the mind and to nurture content- 
ment. It stands upon a level plain, almost 
in the centre of the island, through which, 
between the low green hills that roll away 
on either side, the Avon flows downward to 
the Severn. The country in its neighbour- 
hood is under perfect cultivation, and for 
many miles around presents the appearance 
of a superbly appointed park. Portions of 
the land are devoted to crops and pasture ; 
other portions are thickly wooded with oak, 
elm, willow, and chestnut ; the meadows 
are intersected by hedges of the fragrant 
hawthorn, and the whole region smiles with 
flowers. Old manor-houses, half-hidden 
among the trees, and thatched cottages em- 
bowered with roses, are sprinkled through 
the surrounding landscape ; and all the 
roads which converge upon this point — 
from Warwick, Banbury, Bidford, Alcester, 
Evesham, Worcester, and many other con- 
tiguous towns — wind, in sun and shadow, 
through a sod of green velvet, swept by the 
cool, sweet winds of the English summer. 
.Such felicities of situation and such acces- 



I20 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

series of beauty, however, are not unusual 
in England ; and Stratford, were it not 
hallowed by association, though it might 
always hold a place among the pleasant 
memories of the traveller, would not have 
become a shrine for the homage of the 
world. To Shakespeare it owes its renown ; 
from Shakespeare it derives the bulk of its 
prosperity. To visit Stratford is to tread 
with affectionate veneration in the footsteps 
of the poet. To write about Stratford is to 
write about Shakespeare. 

More than three hundred years have 
passed since the birth of that colossal 
genius, and many changes must have oc- 
curred in his native town within that 
period. The Stratford of Shakespeare's 
time was built principally of timber — as, 
indeed, it is now — and contained about 
fourteen hundred inhabitants. To-day its 
population numbers upwards of eight thou- 
sand. New dwellings have arisen where 
once were fields of wheat, glorious with the 
shimmering lustre of the scarlet poppy. 
The older buildings, for the most part, have 
been demolished or altered. Manufacture, 
chiefly of beer, and of Shakespearean relics, 
has been stimulated into prospei'ous ac- 
tivity. The Avon has been spanned by a 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 121 

new bridge, of iron. The village street.^ 
have been levelled, swept, rolled and gar- 
nished till they look like a Flemish drawing 
of the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare 
cottage, the ancient Tudor house in High 
Street, and the two old churches — authentic 
and splendid memorials of a distant and 
storied past — have been " restored." If the 
poet could walk again through his accustomed 
haunts, though he would see the same smil- 
ing country round about, and hear, as of 
old, the ripple of the Avon murmuring in 
its summer sleep, his eyes would rest on but 
few objects that once he knew. Yet, there 
are the paths that Shakespeare often trod ; 
there stands the house in which he was 
born ; there is the school in which he was 
taught ; there is the cottage in which he 
wooed his sweetheart ; there are the traces 
and relics of the mansion in which he died ; 
and there is the church that keeps his dust, 
so consecrated by the reverence of mankind 
"That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. " 

In shape the town of Stratford somewhat 
resembles a large cross, which is formed 
by High Street, running nearly north and 
south, and Bridge Street, running nearly 
east and Avest. From these, which are 



122 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

main avenues, radiate many and devious 
branches. A few of the streets are broad 
and sti-aight, but many of them are narrow 
and circuitous. High and Bridge Streets 
intersect each other at the centre of the 
town, and here stands the market cross ; 
an old building, with belfry-tower and 
illuminated clock, facing eastward toward 
the old stone bridge, with fourteen arches, 
— the bridge that Sir Hugh Clopton built 
across the Avon in the reign of Henry the 
Seventh. From that central point a few 
steps will bring the traveller to the birth- 
place of Shakespeare. It is a little, two- 
story cottage of timber and plaster, on the 
north side of Henley Street, in the western 
part of the town. It must have been, in 
its pristine days, finer than most of the 
dwellings in its neighbourhood. The one- 
story house, with attic windows, was the 
almost invariable fashion of iDuilding, in all 
English country towns, till the seventeenth 
century. This cottage, besides its two 
stories, had dormer-windows above its roof, 
a pent-house over its door, and altogether 
was built and appointed in a manner both 
luxurious and substantial. Its age is un- 
known ; but the history of Stratford reaches 
back to a period three hundred yeai'S ante- 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 23 

cedent to William the Conqueror, and fancy, 
therefore, is allowed the amplest room to 
magnify its antiquity. It was bought, or at 
all events occupied, by Shakespeare's father 
in 1555, and in it he resided till his death, 
in 1601, when it descended by inheritance 
to the poet. Such is the substance of the 
somewhat complex documentary evidence 
and of the emphatic tradition which conse- 
crate this cottage as the house in which 
Shakespeare was born. The point has 
never been absolutely settled. John Shake- 
speare, the father, in 1564 was the owner 
not only of the house in Henley Street but 
of another in Greenhill Street and of still 
another at Ingon, about a mile and a half 
from Stratford, on the road to Warwick. 
William Shakespeare might have been born 
at either of these dwellings. Tradition, 
however, has sanctified the Henley Street 
cottage ; and this, accordingly, as Shake- 
speare's cradle, will doubtless be piously 
guarded to a late posterity. 

It has already survived serious perils and 
vicissitudes. By Shakespeare's will it was 
bequeathed to his sister Joan — Mrs. William 
Hart — to be held by her, under the yearly 
rent of twelvepence, during her life, and at 
her death to revert to his daughter Susanna 



124 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

and her descendants. His sister Joan ap- 
pears to have been living there at the time of 
his decease, in 1616. She is known to have 
been living there in 1639— twenty-three 
years later, — and doubtless she resided there 
till her death, in 1 646. The estate then passed 
to Susanna — Mrs. John Hall, — from whom 
in 1649 it descended to her grandchild, Lady 
Barnard, who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas 
and George Hai"t, grandsons of Joan. In 
this line of descent it continued — subject to 
many of those infringements which are inci- 
dental to poverty — till 1806, when William 
Shakespeare Hart, the seventh in collateral 
kinship from the poet, sold it to Thomas 
Court, from whose family it was at last pur- 
chased for the British nation. Meantime 
the property, which originally consisted of 
two tenements and a considerable tract of 
adjacent land, had, little by little, been cur- 
tailed of its fair proportions by the sale of 
its gai-dens and orchards. The two tene- 
ments — two in one, that is — had been sub- 
divided. A part of the building became 
an inn — at first called " The Maidenhead," 
afterward ''The Swan," and finally "The 
Swan and Maidenhead, " Another part be- 
came a butcher's shop. The old dormer 
windows and the pent-house disappeared. 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 25 

A new brick casing was foisted upon the 
tavern end of the structure. In front of 
the butcher's shop appeared a sign announc- 
ing " William Shakespeare was born in this 
house. N.B. — A Horse and Taxed Cart to 
Let." Still later appeared another legend, 
vouching that ' ' the immortal Shakespeare 
was born in this house." From 1793 till 
1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, connections 
by marriage with the Harts, lived in the 
Sliakespeare cottage— now at length become 
the resort of literary pilgrims, — and Mary 
Hornby, who set up to be a poet, and 
wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, 
took great delight in exhibiting its rooms to 
visitors. During the reign of this eccentric 
custodian the low ceilings and whitewashed 
walls of its several chambers became covered 
with autographs, scrawled thereon by many 
enthusiasts, including some of the most 
famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary 
Hornby was requested to leave the pre- 
mises. She did not wish to go. She could 
not endure the thought of a successor. 
"After me, the deluge." She was obliged 
to abdicate ; but she conveyed away all the 
furniture and relics alleged to be connected 
with Shakespeare's family, and she hastily 
whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small 



126 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

part of the wall of the upper room, the cham- 
bei in which " nature's darling " first saw the 
light, escaped this act of spiteful sacrilege. 
On the space behind its door may still be 
read many names, with dates affixed, rang- 
ing back from 1820 to 1729. Among them 
is that of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and 
fascinating actress, who wrote it there June 
2, 1809. Much of Mary Hornby's white- 
wash, which chanced to be unsized, was 
afterward removed, so that her work of 
obliteration proved only in part successful. 
Other names have been added to this singu- 
lar, chaotic scroll of worship. Byron, Scott, ^ 
Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and Dickens 
aie illustrious among the votaries here and 
thus recorded. The successors of Mary 
Hornby guarded their charge with pious 
care. The precious value of the old Shake- 
speare cottage grew more and more evident 
to the English people. Washington Irving 
made his pilgrimage to Stratford, and re- 
counted it in his beautiful Sketch-Boole. 
Yet it was not till jNIr. Barnum, from the 
United States, arrived with a proposition to 
buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to 
America that the literary enthusiasm of 
1 Lord Byron visited the cottage August 28, 1816. 
Sir Walter Scott was there in August 1821. 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 127 

Great Britain was made to take a practical 
shape, and this venerated and inestimable 
relic became, in 1847, a national possession. 
Tn 1856, John Shakespeare, of Worthington 
Field, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, gave £2500 
to preserve and restore it ; and within the 
next two years, under the superintendence 
of Edward Gibbs, and William Holton of 
Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition 
of the cottages at its sides and in the rear, re- 
paired wherever decay was visible, set in per- 
fect order, and restored to its ancient self 

The builders of this house must have 
done their work thoroughly M-ell, for, even 
after all these years of rough usage and of 
slow but incessant decline, the great timbers 
remain solid, the plastered walls are firm, 
the huge chimney-stack is as permanent as 
a rock, and the ancient flooring only betrays 
by the scooped out aspect of its boards, and 
the high polish on the heads of the nails 
which fasten them down, that it belongs to 
a period of remote antiquity. The cottage 
stands close upon the margin of the street, 
according to ancient custom of building 
throughout Stratford ; and, entering through 
a little porch, the pilgrim stands at once in 
that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its 
wide fire-place, so familiar in prints of the 



128 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

chimney-corner of Shakesj^eare's youthful 
days. Within the fire-place, on either side, 
is a seat fashioned in the brick-work ; and 
here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the boy- 
poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing 
dreamily into the flames, and building castles 
in that fairy-land of fancy which was his 
celestial inheritance. Nothing else in this 
room detains attention, and you presently 
pass from it by a narrow, well-worn stair- 
case to the chainber above, which is shown 
as the place of the poet's birth. An anti- 
quated chair, of the sixteenth century, 
stands in the right-hand corner. At the left 
is a small fire-place, made in the rectangular 
form which is still usual. All around the 
walls are visible the great beams which are 
the framework of the building — beams of 
seasoned oak that will last for eve)-. Oppo- 
site to the door of entrance is a threefold 
casement (the original window) full of 
narrow panes of white glass scrawled all 
over with names that their worshipful 
owners have written with diamonds. -The 
ceiling is so low that you can easily touch 
it with uplifted hand. A portion of it is 
held in place by an intricate network of 
little laths. This room, and, indeed, the 
whole structure, is as polished and lustrous 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. I29 

as any waxen, royal hall in the Louvre, and 
it impresses observation very much like old 
lace that has been treasured up with lavender 
or jasmine. These walls, which no one is 
now permitted to mar, were naturally the 
favourite scroll of the Shakespeare votaries 
of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears 
marks of the pencil of reverence. Hundreds 
of names are written here — some of them 
famous, but most of them obscure, and all 
destined at no very distant day to perish 
where they stand. On the chimney-piece 
at the right of the fire-place, which is 
named the " Actors' Pillar," several actors 
have inscribed their signatures. Edmund 
Kean wrote his name here — probably the 
greatest actor that ever lived — and with 
what soulful veneration and spiritual sym- 
pathy it is awful even to try to imagine. 
Sir Walter Scott's name is scratched with 
a diamond on the window — " W. Scott." 
That of Thackeray appears on the ceiling, 
and close by it is that of Helen Faucit. 
VestMS is written near the fire-place. Mark 
Lemon and Charles Dickens are together on 
the opposite wall. Byron wrote his name 
there, but it has disappeared. The cata- 
logue would be endless ; and it is not of 
these offerings of fealty that you think 



13© THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

when you sit and muse alone in that myste- 
rious chamber. As once again I conjure up 
that strange and solemn scene, the sunshine 
rests in checkered squares upon the ancient 
floor, the motes swim in the sunbeams, the 
air is very cold, the place is hushed as 
death, and over it all there broods an 
atmosphere of grave suspense and hopeless 
desolation — a sense of some tremendous 
energy stricken dumb and frozen into 
silence and past and gone for ever. 

The other rooms which are shown in the 
Shakespeare cottage possess but few points 
of special interest. Opposite to the birth - 
chamber, at the rear, there is a small apart- 
ment, in which is displayed "the Stratford 
Portrait " of the poet. This painting is sup- 
posed to have been owned by the Clopton 
family, and to have fallen into the hands of 
William Hunt, an old resident of Stratford, 
who bought their mansion of the Cloptons, 
in 1758. The adventures through which it 
passed can only be conjectured. It does not 
appear to have been valued, and although it 
remained in the house it was cast away 
amongst lumber and rubbish. In process of 
time it was painted over and changed into a 
different subject. Then it fell a prey to dirt 
and damp. There is a story that the little 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. I3I 

boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed 
to use it as a target for their arrows. At 
last, after the lapse of a century, the grand- 
son of William Hunt showed it by chance to 
an expert artist, who luckily surmised that 
a valuable portrait might perhaps exist be- 
neath its muddy surface. It was carefully 
cleaned. A thick beard and a pair of mous- 
taches were removed, and the face of Shake- 
speare emerged upon the canvas. It is not 
pretended that this portrait was painted in 
Shakespeare's time. The very close resem- 
blance which it bears, in attitude, dress, 
colours, and other peculiarities, to the 
painted bust of the poet in Stratford church 
seems to indicate that it was a modern copy 
of that work. Upon a brass plate affixed to 
it is the following inscription : * ' This portrait 
of Shakespeare, after being in the possession 
of Mr. William Oakes Hunt, town-clerk of 
Stratford, and his family, for upwards of a 
century, was restored to its original condi- 
tion by Mr. Simon Collins of London, and, 
being considered a portrait of much interest 
and value, was given by Mr. Hunt to the 
town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be pre- 
served in Shakespeare's house, 23d April, 
1862." There, accordingly, it remains, and 
in memory's association with the several other 



132 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

dubious presentments of the poet, cheerfully 
adds to the mental confusion of the pilgrim 
who would fain form an accurate ideal of 
Shakespeare's appearance. Standing in its 
presence it was worth while to reflect that 
there are only two authentic representations 
of Shakespeare in existence — the Droeshout 
portrait and the Gerard Johnson bust. They 
may not be perfect works of art ; they may 
not do perfect justice to the original ; but 
they were seen and accepted by persons to 
whom Shakespeare had been a living com- 
panion. The bust was sanctioned by his chil- 
dren ; the portrait was sanctioned by his 
friend Ben Jonson, and by his brother actors 
Heminge and Condell, who prefixed it, in 
1623, to the first folio of his works. Stand- 
ing amongst the relics which have been 
gathered into a museum in an apartment on 
the ground-floor of the cottage it was essen- 
tial also to remember how often "the wish 
is father to the thought " that sanctifies the 
uncertain memorials of the distant past. 
Several of the most suggestive documents, 
though, which bear upon the vague and 
shadowy record of Shakespeare's life, are 
preserved in this place. Here is a deed, 
made in 1596, wliich proves that this house 
was his father's residence. Here is the only 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 33 

letter addressed to him which is known to 
exist — the letter, of Richard Quiney (1598) 
asking for the loan of thirty pounds. Here 
is his declaration in a suit, in 1604, to re- 
cover the price of some malt that he had sold 
to Philip Rogers. Here is a deed, dated 
1609, on which is the autograph of his 
brother Gilbert, who represented him at 
Stratford in his business affairs while he was 
absent in London, and who, surviving, it is 
dubiously said, almost till the period of the 
Restoration, talked, as a very old man, of 
the poet's impersonation of Adam in "As 
You Like It." Here likewise is shown a 
gold seal ring, found not many years ago in 
a field near Stratford church, on which, deli- 
cately engraved, appear the letters W. S., 
entwined with a true-lover's knot. It may 
have belonged to Shakespeare. The conjec- 
ture is that it did, and that, since on the last 
of the three sheets which contain his will 
the word "seal" is stricken out and the 
word " hand " substituted, he did not seal 
this document because he had only just then 
lost this ring. The supposition is, at least, 
ingenious. It will not harm the visitor to 
accept it. Nor, as he stands poring over the 
ancient and decrepit school-desk which has 
been lodged in this museum, from the gram- 



134 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

mar-school in High Street, will it greatly tax 
his credulity to believe that the "shining 
morning face " of the boy Shakespeare once 
looked down upon it in the irksome quest of 
his "small Latin and less Greek." They 
call it "Shakespeare's desk." It is very 
old, and it is certainly known to have been 
in the school of the Chapel of the Holy 
Guild, three hundred years ago. There are 
other relics, more or less indirectly con- 
nected with the great name that is here 
commemorated. The inspection of them all 
would consume many days ; the description 
of them would occupy many pages. You 
write your name in the visitors' book at 
parting, and perhaps stroll forth into the 
garden of the cottage, which encloses it at 
the sides and in the rear, and there, beneath 
the leafy boughs of the English elm, while 
your footsteps press ' ' the grassy carpet of 
this plain," behold growing all around you 
the rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, 
rue, daisies, and violets, which make the im- 
perishable garland on Ophelia's grave, and 
which are the fragrance of her solemn and 
lovely memory. 

Thousands of times the wonder must have 
been expressed that, while the world knows 
so much about Shakespeare's mind, it should 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 35 

know SO little about his history. The date 
of his birth, even, is established by an infer- 
ence. The register of Stratford church shows 
that he was baptised there in 1564, on the 
26th of April. It is said to have been 
customary to baptise infants on the third 
day after their birth. It is presumed that 
the custom was followed in this instance, 
and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare 
was born on April 23d — a date which, 
making allowance for the difference be- 
tween the old and new styles of reckoning 
time, corresponds to our 3d of MaJ^ Equally 
by an inference it is established that the 
boy was educated in the free grammar- 
school. The school was there ; and any 
boy of the town, who was seven years old 
and able to read, could get admission to 
it. Shakespeare's father, chief alderman of 
Stratford, and then a man of worldly sub- 
stance, though afterward he became poor, 
would surely have wished that his children 
should grow up in knowledge. To the 
ancient school-house, accordingly, and the 
adjacent chapel of the guild — which are still 
extant, on the south-east coi'ner of Chapel 
and High Streets — the pilgrim confidently 
traces the footsteps of the poet. These 
buildings are of singular, picturesque quaint- 



136 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

ness. The chapel dates back to about the 
middle of the thirteenth century. It was a 
Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1269, 
under the patronage of the Bishop of Wor- 
cester, and committed to the pious custody 
of the guild of Stratford. A hospital was 
connected with it in those days, and Robert 
de Stratford was its first master. New 
privileges and confirmation were granted to 
the guild by Henry the Fourth, in 1403, 
and 1429. The grammar-school, established 
on an endowment of lands and tenements 
by Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in association 
with it in 1482. Toward the end of the 
reign of Henry the Seventh the whole of 
the chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn 
down and rebuilt under the munificent 
direction of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor 
of London, and Stratford's chief citizen and 
benefactor. Under Henry the Eighth, when 
came the stormy times of the Reformation, 
the priests were driven out, the guild was 
dissolved, and the chapel was despoiled. 
Edward the Sixth, however, granted a new 
charter to this ancient institution, and with 
especial precautions reinstated the school. 
The chapel itself was used as a schoolroom 
when Shakespeare was a boy, and till as 
late as the year 1595 , and in case the lad 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 37 

did really go thither (in 1571) as a pupil, he 
must have been from childhood familiar 
with the series of grotesque paintings upon 
its walls, presenting, as in a pictorial pano- 
rama, the history of the Holy Cross, from 
its origin as a tree at the beginning of the 
world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. These 
paintings were brought to light in 1804 in 
the course of a general repairing of the 
chapel, which then occurred, when the 
walls were relieved of thick coatings of 
whitewash, laid on them long before, in 
Puritan times, either to spoil or to hide 
from the spoiler. They are not visible now. 
This chapel and its contents constitute one 
of the few remaining spectacles at Stratford 
that bring us face to face with Shakespeare. 
During the last years of his life he dwelt 
almost continually in his liouse of New 
Place, on the corner immediately opposite 
to this church. The configuration of the 
excavated foundations of that house indi- 
cates what would now be called a deep 
bay-window in its southern front. There, 
probably, was Shakespeare's study ; and 
through that casement, many and many a 
time, in storm and in sunshine, by night 
and by day, he must have looked out upon 
the grim, square tower the embattled stone 



138 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

wall, and the four tall Gothic windows of 
that dark, mysterious temple. The moment 
your gaze falls upon it, the low-breathed, 
horror-stricken words of Lady Macbeth 
spring involuntarily to j^our lips : — 

" The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements." 

New Place, Shakespeare's home at the 
time of his death, and presumably the house 
in which he died, stood on the north-east 
corner of High Street and Chapel Street. 
Nothing now remains of it but a portion of 
its foundations — long buried in the earth, 
but found and exhumed in comparatively 
recent days. Its gardens have been re- 
deemed, through the zealous and devoted 
exertions of Mr. Halliwell, and have been 
restored to what is thought to have been 
almost their exact condition when Shake- 
speare owned them. The crumbling frag- 
ments of the foundation are covered with 
screens of wood and wire. A mulberry-tree 
— the grandson of the famous mulberry 
which Shakespeare himself is known to 
liave planted — is growing on the spot once 
occupied by its renowned ancestor. There 
is no drawing or print in existence which 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 39 

shows New Place as it was when Shake- 
speare left it, but there is a sketch of it as 
it appeared in 1740. The house was made 
of brick and timber, and was built by Sir 
Hugh Clopton nearly a century before it 
became by purchase the property of the 
poet. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, and 
in it passed, intermittently, a considerable 
part of the last nineteen years of his life. 
It had borne the name of New Place before 
it came into his possession. The Clopton 
family parted with it in 1563, and it was 
subsequently owned by the families of Bott 
and of Underhill. At Shakespeare's death 
it was inherited by his eldest daughter, 
Susanna, wife to Dr. John Hall. In 1643, 
Mrs. Hall, then seven years a widow, being 
still its owner and occupant, Henrietta 
Maria, queen to Charles the First, who had 
come to Stratford with a part of the royal 
army, resided for three weeks at New Place, 
which, therefore, must even then have been 
the most considerable private residence in 
the town. Mrs. Hall, dying in 1649, aged 
sixty-six, left it to her only child, Eliza- 
beth, then Mrs. Thomas Nashe, who after- 
ward became Lady Barnard, wife to Sir 
Thomas Barnard, and in whom the direct 
line of Shakespeare ended. After her death 



I40 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

the estate was purchased by Sir Edward 
Walker, in 1675, who ultimately left it to 
his daughter's husband, Sir John Clopton, 
and so it once more passed into the hands 
of the family of its founder. A second Sir 
Hugh Clopton owned it at the middle of the 
last century, and under his direction it was 
repaired, freshly decorated, and fux-nished 
with a new front. That proved the begin- 
ning of the end of this old structure, as a 
relic of Shakespeare ; for this owner, dying 
in 1751, bequeathed it to his son-in-law, 
Henry Talbot, who in 1753 sold it to the 
most universally execrated iconoclast of 
modern times, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, 
vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, by whom it 
was destroyed. Mr. Gastrell, it appears, 
was a man of fortune, as he certainly was one 
of insensibility. He knew little of Shake- 
speare, but he knew that the frequent in- 
cursion, into his garden, of strangers who 
came to sit beneath " Shakespeare's mul- 
berry " was a troublesome annoyance. He 
struck, therefore, at the root of the vexa- 
tion, and cut down the tree. This was in 
1756. The wood was purchased by Thomas 
Sharp, a watchmaker of Stratford, who sub- 
sequently made the solemn declaration that 
he carried it to his home and converted it 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. I4I 

into toys and kindred memorial relics. The 
villagers of Stratford, meantime, incensed 
at the barbarity of Mr. Gastrell, took their 
revenge by breaking his windows. In this 
and in other ways the clergyman was pro- 
bably made to realise his local unpopularity. 
It had been his custom to reside during a 
part of each year in Lichfield, leaving some 
of his servants in charge of New Place. 
The overseers of Stratford, having lawful 
authority to levy a tax, for the maintenance 
of the poor, on every house in the town 
valued at more than forty shillings a year, 
did not, it may be presumed, neglect to 
make a vigorous use of their privilege in 
the case of Mr. Gastrell. The result of their 
exactions in the sacred cause of charity was 
at least significant. In 1757 Mr. Gastrell 
declared that that house should never be 
taxed again, pulled down the building, sold 
the materials of which it had consisted, and 
left Stratford for ever. A modern house 
now stands on a part of the site of what 
was once Shakespeare's home, and here has 
been established another museum of Shake- 
spearean relics. None of these relics is of 
imposing authenticity or of remarkable in- 
terest. Among them is a stone mullion, 
dug up on the site, which may have be- 



142 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

longed to a window of the original mansion. 
This entire estate, bought from different 
owners and restored to its Shakespearean 
condition, became in 1875 the property of 
the coi'poration of Stratford. The tract of 
land is not lai-ge. The visitor may traverse 
the whole of it in a few minutes, although 
if he obey his inclination he will linger 
there for hours. The enclosure is about 
three hundred feet square, possibly larger. 
The lawn is in beautiful condition. The 
line of the walls that once separated this 
from the two gardens of vegetables and of 
flowers is traced in the turf. The mul- 
berry is large and flourishing, and wears its 
honours in contented vigour. Other trees 
give grateful shade to the grounds, and the 
voluptuous red roses, growing all around in 
profuse richness, load the air with bewilder- 
ing fragrance. Eastward, at a little dis- 
tance, flows the Avon. Not far away rises 
the graceful spire of the Holy Trinity. A 
few rooks, hovering in the air and wisely 
bent on some facetious mischief, send down 
through the silvery haze of the summer 
morning their sagacious yet melancholy 
caw. The windows of the grey chapel 
across the street twinkle, and keep their 
solemn secret. On this spot was first waved 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. I43 

the mystic wand of Prospero. Here Ariel 
sang of dead men's bones turned into pearl 
and coral in the deep caverns of the sea. 
Here arose into everlasting life Hermione, 
" as tender as infancy and grace." Here 
were created Miranda and Perdita, twins of 
heaven's own radiant goodness — 

"Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea's breath." 

To endeavour to touch upon the larger 
and more august aspect of Shakespeare's 
life — when, as his wonderful sonnets betray, 
his great heart had felt the devastating blast 
of cruel passions, and the deepest knowledge 
of the good and evil of the universe had 
been borne in upon his soul — would be im- 
pious presumption. Happily, to the stroller 
in Stratford every association connected 
witli him is gentle and tender. His image, 
as it rises there, is of smiling boyhood, or 
sedate and benignant maturity ; always 
either joyous or serene, never passionate, 
or turbulent, or dark. The pilgrim thinks 
of him as a happy child at his father's fire- 
side ; as a wondering school-boy in the 



144 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

quiet, venerable close oi the old Guild 
Chapel, where still the only sound that 
breaks the silence is the chirp of birds or 
tlie creaking of the church vane ; as a hand- 
some, dauntless youth, sporting by his be- 
loved river or roaming through field and 
forest many miles about ; as the bold, ad- 
venturous spirit, bent on frolic and mischief, 
and not averse to danger, leading, perhaps, 
the wild lads of his village in their poaching 
depredations on the park of Charlcote ; as 
the lover, strolling through the green lanes 
of Shottery, hand in hand with the darling 
of his first love, while round them the 
honeysuckle breathed out its fragrant heart 
upon the winds of night, and overhead the 
moonlight, streaming through rifts of elm 
and poplar, fell on their pathway in showers 
of shimmering silver ; and, last of all, as the 
illustrious poet, rooted and secure in his 
massive and shining fame, loved by many, 
and venerated and mourned by all, borne 
slowly through Stratford churchyard, while 
the golden bells were tolled in sorrow, 
and the mourning lime-trees dropped their 
blossoms on his bier, to the place of his 
eternal rest. Through all the scenes inci- 
dental to this experience the worshipper of 
Shakespeare's genius may follow him every 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 45 

step of the way. The old foot-path across 
the fields to Shottery remains accessible. 
The wild-flowers are blooming along its 
margin. The white blossoms of the chest- 
nut hang over it. The gardens and meadows 
tlirough which it winds are sprinkled with 
the gorgeous scarlet of the poppy. The 
hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from 
Stratford, stepping westward toward the 
sunset ; and there, nestled beneath the elms, 
and almost embowered in vines and roses, 
stands the cottage in which Anne Hathaway 
was wooed and won. This is even more anti- 
quated in appearance than the cottage of 
Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of 
the distant past. It is built of wood and 
plaster, ribbed with massive timbers, — 
crossed and visible all along its front, — and 
covered with a thatch roof. It fronts east- 
ward, presenting its southern end to the 
road. Under its eaves, peeping through 
embrasures cut in the thatch, are four tiny 
casements, round which the ivy twines and 
the roses wave softly in the wind of June. 
The northern end of the structure is higher 
than the southern, and the old building, 
originally divided into two tenements, is 
now divided into three. In front of it is 
a straggling terrace and a large garden. 



146 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet 
not of neglect, in its appointments and sur- 
roundings. The place is still the abode of 
labour and lowliness. Entering its parlour 
you see a stone floor, a wide fire-place, a 
broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy chim- 
ney-corners, and near this an old wooden 
settle, much decayed but still serviceable, 
on which Shakespeare may often have sat, 
with Anne at his side. The plastered walls 
of this room here and there reveal traces of 
an oaken wainscot. The ceiling is low. 
This evidently was the farm-house of a sub- 
stantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the 
Eighth. The Hathaway s had lived in 
Shottery for forty years prior to Shake- 
speare's marriage. The poet, then wholly 
undistinguished, had just turned eighteen, 
while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and 
it has been said that she acted ill in wed- 
ding this boy-lover. They were married 
in November 1582, and their first child, 
Susanna, came in the following May. Anne 
Hathaway must have been a wonderfully 
fascinating woman, or Shakespeare would 
not so have loved her ; and she must have 
loved him dearly-— as what woman, indeed, 
could help it ? — or she would not thus have 
yielded to his passion. There is direct testi- 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 47 

mony to the beauty of his person ; and in 
the light afforded by his writings it requires 
no extraordinary penetration to conjecture 
that his brilliant mind, sparkling humour, 
tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must 
have made him, in his youth, the very para- 
gon of enchanters. It is not known where 
they lived during the first years after their 
marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at Shot- 
tery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith 
Sadler, for whom their twins, born in 1585, 
were named Hamnet and Judith. Her 
father's house assuredly would have been 
chosen for Anne's refuge, when presently, 
in 1586, Shakespeare was obliged to leave 
his wife and children, and go away to 
London to seek his fortune. He did not 
buy New Place till 1597, but it is known 
that in the meantime he came to his native 
town once every year. It was in Strat- 
ford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. 
Anne and her children probably had never 
left the town. They show a bedstead 
and other bits of furniture, together with 
certain homespun sheets of everlasting 
linen, that are kept as heirlooms to this 
day in the garret of the Shottery cot- 
tage. Here is the room that may often 
have welcomed the poet when he came 



148 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

home from his labours in the great city. It 
is a very homely and humble place, but the 
sight of it makes the heart thrill with a 
strange and incommunicable awe. You can- 
not wish to speak when you are standing 
there. You are scarcely conscious of the 
low rustling of the leaves outside, the far-off 
sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint 
fragrance of woodbine and maiden's-blush 
that is wafted in at the open casement, and 
that swathes in nature's incense a memory 
sweeter than itself. 

Associations may be established by fable 
as well as by fact. There is but little 
reason to believe the old legendary tale, 
first recorded by Rowe, that Shakespeare, 
having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas 
Lucy of Charlcote, was so severely perse- 
cuted by that magistrate that he was com- 
pelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself 
in London. Yet the story has twisted it- 
self into all the lives of Shakespeare, and 
whether received or rejected has clung till 
this day to the house of Charlcote. That 
noble mansion — a genuine specimen, despite 
a few modern alterations, of the architecture 
of Queen Elizabeth's time — is found on the 
western bank of the Avon, about three miles 
southwest from Stratford. It is a long, 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. I49 

rambling, three -storied palace — quite as 
finely quaint as old St. James's in London, 
and not altogether unlike that edifice in 
general character — with octagon turrets, 
gables, l)alustrades, Tudor casements, and 
great stacks of chimneys, so densely closed 
in by elms of giant growth that you can 
scarce distinguish it through the foliage till 
you are close upon it. It was erected in 
1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was 
Sheriif of Warwickshire, and who was 
knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1593. 
There is a silly, wretched old ballad in ex- 
istence, attributed to Shakespeare, which,' 
it is said, w^as found afiixed to Lucy's park 
gate, and gave him great offence. He must 
have been more than commonly sensitive to 
low abuse if he could really have been 
annoyed by such a manifestly scurrilous 
ebullition of the blackguard and the block- 
head, — supposing, indeed, that he ever saw 
it. In it he is called a " knight," which, in 
fact, he did not become until at least five 
years after the time when this precious 
document is alleged to have been written. 
The writing, proffered as the work of Shake- 
speare, is undoubtedly a forgery. There is 
but one existing reason to think that the 
poet ever cherished a grudge against the 



150 THE HOME OF SirAKESPEARE. 

Lucy family, and that is the coarse allusion 
to the name which is found in the '* Merry 
Wives of Windsor." There was apparently, 
a second Sir Thomas Lucy, later than the 
Sheriff, who was still more of the Puritanic 
breed, while Shakespeare, evidently, was a 
Cavalier. It is possible that in a youthful 
frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff 
Lucy's preserves. Even so, the affair was 
extremely trivial. It is possible, too, that 
in after years he may have had reason to 
dislike the extra -Puritanical neighbour. 
Some memory of the tradition will, of 
course, haunt the traveller's thoughts as he 
strolls by Hatton Rock and through the 
antiquated villages of Hampton and Charl- 
cote. But this discordant recollection is 
soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveli- 
ness of the ramble — past aged hawthorns 
that Shakespeare himself must have seen, 
and under the boiighs of beeches, limes, and 
drooping willows, where every footstep falls 
on wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that 
is softer than Indian silk and as firm and 
springy as the sands of the sea-beaten shore. 
Thought of Sir Thomas Lucy will not be 
otherwise than kind, neither, when the 
stranger in Charlcote church reads the 
epitaph with which the old knight himself 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 151 

commemorated his wife: "All the time of 
her life a true and faithful servant of her 
good God ; nev^er detected of any crime or 
vice ; in religion most sound ; in love to her 
husband most faithful and true ; in friend- 
ship most constant ; to what in trust was 
committed to her most secret ; in wisdom 
excelling ; in governing her house and bring- 
ing up of youth in the fear of God that did 
converse with her most rare and singular. 
A great maintainer of hospitality ; greatly 
esteemed of her betters ; misliked of none, 
unless of the envious. When all is spoken 
that can be said, a woman so furnished and 
garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, 
and hardly to be equalled of any. As she 
lived most virtuously, so she died most 
godly. Set down by him that best did know 
what hath been written to be true, Thomas 
Lucy." A narrow formalist he may have 
been, and a severe magistrate in his deal- 
ings with scapegrace youths, and perhaps 
a haughty and disagreeable neighbour ; but 
there is a touch of genuine manhood, high 
feeling, and virtuous and self-respecting 
character in these lines which instantly 
wins the response of sympathy. If Shake- 
speare really shot the deer of Thomas Lucy 
the injured gentleman had a right to feel 



152 THE HOME OF SHAKESrEARE. 

annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was 
not a saint, and those who so account him 
can have read his works to but little pur- 
pose. He can bear the full brunt of all his 
faults. He does not need to be canonised. 

This ramble to Charlcote — one of the 
prettiest walks about Stratford — was, it 
may surely be supposed, often taken by 
Shakespeare. He would pass the old mill 
bridge (new in 1599), which still spans the 
Avon a little way to the south of the 
chui'ch. The quaint, sleepy mill — flecked 
with moss and ivy — which adds such a 
charm to the prospect, was doubtless fresh 
and bright in those distant days. The gaze 
of Shakespeare assuredly dwelt on it with 
pleasure. His footsteps may be traced, 
also, in fancy, to the region of the old 
college building (demolished in 1799), which 
stood in the southern part of Stratford, and 
was the home of his friend John Combe, 
factor of Fulke Greville, Earl of Warwick. 
Still another of his walks must have tended 
northward through Wei combe, where he 
was the owner of lands, to the portly manor 
of Clopton. On what is called the " Ancient 
House," which stands on the west side of 
High Street, not far from New Place, he 
may often liave looked, as he strolled past 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 53 

to the inns of the Boar and the Red Horse. 
This building, dated 1596, survives, not- 
withstanding some modern touches of re- 
habilitation, as a beautiful specimen of 
Tudor architecture in one at least of its 
most charming features, the carved and 
timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three 
stories, containing parlour, sitting-room, 
kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides 
cellars and brew-shed ; and when sold at 
auction, August 23d, 1876, it brought £400. 
There are other dwellings fully as old in 
Stratford, but they have been newly painted 
and otherwise changed. This is a genuine 
piece of antiquity, and vies with the gram- 
mar-school of the Guild, under whose pent- 
house the poet could not have failed to pass 
whenever he went abroad from New Place. 
Julius Shaw, one of the five witnesses to his 
will, lived in a house close by the grammar- 
school ; and here, it is reasonable to think, 
Shakespeare would often pause for a chat 
with his friend and neighbour. In all the 
little streets by the river-side, which are 
ancient and redolent of the past, his image 
seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane 
(now called Chapel Lane) he owned a little, 
low cottage, bought of Walter Getley in 
1602, and only destroyed within the present 



154 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

century. These and kindred shreds of fact, 
suggesting the poet as a living man and 
connecting him, how^soever vaguely, with 
our human, everyday experience, are seized 
on with peculiar zest by the pilgrim in 
Stratford. Such a votary, for example, 
never doubts that Shakespeare was a fre- 
quenter, in leisure and convivial hours, of 
the ancient Red Horse Inn. It stood there 
in his day as it stands now, on the right- 
hand side of Bridge Street, westward from 
the Avon. There are many other taverns 
in the town — the Shakespeare (a delightful 
retreat), the Falcon, the White Hart, the 
Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the 
Cross Keys, being a few of them — but the 
Red Horse takes precedence of all its kin- 
dred, in the fascinating, because suggestive, 
attribute of antiquity. Moreover, it was 
the Red Horse that harboured Washing- 
ton Irving, the pioneer of American wor- 
shippers at the shrine of Shakespeare ; 
and the American explorer of Stratford 
would cruelly sacrifice his peace of mind if 
he were to repose under any other roof. 
The Red Horse is a rambling, three-story 
building, entered through a large archway, 
^vhich leads into a long, straggling yard, 
adjacent to many offices and stables. On 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 55 

one side of the entrance is found the 
smoking-room and bar ; on the other are 
the coffee-room and several sitting-rooms. 
Above are the chambers. It is a thoroughly 
old-fashioned inn— such a one as we may 
suppose the Boar's Head to have been, in 
the time of Prince Henry ; such a one as 
untravelled Americans only know in the 
pages of Dickens. The rooms are furnished 
in plain and homely style, but their asso- 
ciations readily deck them with the fra- 
grant garlands of memory. When Drayton 
and Jonson came down to visit "gentle 
Will " at Stratford they could scarcely 
have omitted to quaff the humming ale of 
Warwickshire in this cosy parlour. When 
Queen Henrietta Maria was ensconced at 
New Place, the lionoured guest of Shake- 
speare's elder and favourite daughter, the 
general of the royal forces quartered himself 
at the Red Horse, and then doubtless there 
was enough and to spare of merry revelry 
within its walls. A little later the old house 
was soundly peppered by the Roundhead 
bullets and the whole town was overrun with 
the close-cropped, psalm-singing soldiers of 
the Commonwealth. In 1742 Garrick and 
Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and hither 
again came Carrick in 1769, to direct the 



156 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

great Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then 
most dismally accomplished, but which is 
always remembered to the great actor's 
credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, 
lodged here when he came to Stratford in 
quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The 
visit of Irving, supplemented with his deli- 
cious chronicle, has led to what might be 
called almost the consecration of the parlour 
in which he sat and the chamber in which 
he slept. They still keep the poker — now 
marked "Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre" — with 
which, as he sat there in long, silent, and 
ecstatic meditation, he so ruthlessly prodded 
the fire in the narrow, tiny grate. They 
keep also the chair in which he sat — a plain, 
straight-backed arm-chair, with a haircloth 
seat, duly marked, on a brass label, with his 
renowned and treasured name. Thus genius 
can sanctify even the humblest objects, 

" And shed a something of celestial light 
Round the familiar face of every day." 

To pass rapidly in review the little that is 
known of Shakespeare's life is, nevertheless, 
to be impressed not only by its incessant 
and amazing literary productiveness, but by 
the quick succession of its salient incidents. 
The vitality must have been enormous that 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 57 

created in so short a time such a number 
and variety of works of the first class. The 
same "quick spirit" would naturally have 
kept in agitation all the elements of his daily 
experience. Descended from an ancestor 
who had fought for the Red Rose on Bos- 
worth Field, he was born to repute as well 
as competence, and during his early child- 
hood he received instruction and training in 
a comfortable home. He escaped the plague, 
which was raging in Stratford when he was 
an infant, and which took many victims. 
He went to school when seven years old and 
left it when about fourteen. He then had 
to work for his living — his once opulent 
father having fallen into misfortune — and 
he became an apprentice to a butcher, or 
else a lawyer's clerk (there were seven 
lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a 
school-teacher. Perhaps he was all three — 
and more. It is conjectured that he saw 
the players who from time to time acted in 
the Guildhall, under the auspices of the 
corporation of Stratford ; that he attended 
the religious entertainments which were 
customarily given in the neighbouring city 
of Coventry ; and that in particular he wit- 
nessed the elaborate and sumptuous pageants 
witli which in 1575 the Earl of Leicester 



158 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

welcomed Queen Elizabeth to Kenilvvorth 
Castle. He married at eighteen ; and, leav- 
ing a wife and three children in Stratford, 
he went np to London at twenty-two. 
His entrance into theatrical life immediately 
followed — in what capacity it is impossible 
to judge. One dubious account says that 
he held horses for the public at the theatre 
door ; another that he got employment as a 
prompter to the actors. It is certain that 
he had not been in the theatrical business 
long before he began to make himself felt. 
At twenty-eight he was known as a prosper- 
ous author. At twenty-nine he had acted 
with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth ; and 
while Spenser had extolled him in the 
"Tears of the Muses,"' the hostile Greene 
had disparaged him in the " Groat's- worth 
of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired 
wealth enough to purchase New Place, the 
principal residence in his native town, where 
now he placed his family and established his 
home, — himself remaining in London, but 
visiting Stratford at regular intervals. At 
thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of 
Knowell in Ben Jonson's comedy, then new, 
of Every Man in his Hmnmir, and he re- 
ceived the glowing encomium of Meres in 
WWs Treasuvfj. At thirty-eight he had 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 59 

written Hamlet and As You Like It, and, 
moreover, he was now become the owner of 
more estate in Stratford, costing him £320. 
At forty-one he made his largest purchase, 
buying for £440 the tithes of Stratford, Old 
Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. In 
the meantime he had smoothed the declin- 
ing years of his father, and had followed 
him with love and duty to the grave. Other 
domestic bereavements likewise befell him, 
and other worldly cares and duties were laid 
upon his hands, but neither grief nor busi- 
ness could check the fei'tility of his brain. 
Within the next ten years he wrote, among 
other great plays, Othello, Lear, Mac- 
beth, and Coriolanus. At about forty- 
eight he seems to have disposed of his 
shares in the two London theatres with 
which he had been connected, the Black- 
friars and the Globe, and shortly afterward, 
his work as we possess it being well-nigh 
completed, he retired finally to his Stratford 
home. That he was the comrade of all the 
bright spirits who glittered in ' ' the spacioiis 
times" of Elizabeth many of them have left 
their personal testimony. That he was the 
king of them all is evidenced in his works. 
The Sonnets seem to disclose that there was 
a mysterious, almost a tragical, passage in 



l6o THE HOME OF SHAKKSPfiARK. 

his life, and that he was called to bear the 
secret burden of a great and perhaps a cal- 
amitous personal grief — one of those griefs, 
too, which, being germinated by sinful love, 
are endless in the punishment they entail. 
Happily, however, no antiquarian student 
of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded in 
coming very near to the man. While he 
was in London he used to frequent the 
Falcon Tavern and the Mermaid, and he 
lived at one time in Bishopsgate Street, and 
at another time in Clink Street, in South- 
wark. As an actor his name has been asso- 
ciated with his own characters of Adam, 
Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost of King 
Hamlet, and a contemporary reference de- 
clared him " excellent in the quality he pro- 
fesses." Many of his manuscripts, it is 
probable, perished in the fire which con- 
sumed the Globe Theatre in 1613. He 
passed his last days in his home at Stratford, 
and died there, somewhat suddenly, on his 
fifty-second birthday. This event, it may 
be worth while to observe, occurred within 
thirty-three years of the execution of Charles 
the First, under the Puritan Commonwealth 
of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritan spirit, 
intolerant of the play-house and of all its 
works, must even then have been gaining 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. l6l 

formidable strength. His daughter Judith, 
aged thirty-two at the time of his death, 
survived him forty-six years, and the 
whisper of tradition says that she was a 
Puritan, If so the strange and seemingly 
unaccountable disappearance of whatever 
play-house papers he may have left behind 
him at Stratford should not be obscure. The 
suggestion is likely to have been made 
before ; and also it is likely to have been 
supplemented with a reference to the great 
fire in London in 1666 — (which in consum- 
ing St. Paul's Cathedral burned an immense 
quantity of books and manuscripts that had 
been brought from all the threatened parts 
of the city and heaped beneath its arches for 
safety) — as probably the final and effectual 
holocaust of almost every piece of print or 
writing that might have served to illuminate 
the history of Shakespeare. In his person- 
ality no less than in the fathomless re- 
sources of his genius he baffles all scrutiny 
and stands for ever alone. 

" Others abide our question ; thou art free : 
We ask, and ask ; thou smilest and art still — 
Out-topping knowledge," 

It is impossible to convey in words even 
an adequate suggestion of the prodigious 

S.E. L 



1 62 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

and overwhelming sense of peace tliat falls 
upon the soul of the pilgrim in Stratford 
church. All the cares and struggles and 
trials of mortal life, all its failures, and 
equally all its achievements, seem there to 
pass utterly out of remembrance. It is not 
now an idle reflection that " the paths of 
glory lead but to the grave." No power of 
human tliought ever rose higher or went 
further than the thought of Shakespeare. 
N'o human being, using the best weapons 
of intellectual achievement, ever accom- 
plished so much. Yet here he lies — who 
was once so great ! And here also, gatliered 
around him in death, lie his parents, his 
children, his descendants, and his friends. 
For him and for them the struggle has long 
since ended. Let no man fear to tread the 
dark pathway that Shakespeare has trodden 
before him. Let no man, standing at this 
grave, and seeing and feeling that all the 
vast labours of that celestial genius end 
here at last in a handful of dust, fret and 
grieve any more over the puny and evanes- 
cent toils of to-day, so soon to be buried 
in oblivion 1 In the simple performance of 
duty, and in the life of the affections, there 
may be permanence and solace. The rest is 
an "unsubstantial pageant." It breaks, it 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 63 

clianges, it dies, it passes awaj^ it is for- 
gotten ; and though a great name be now 
and then for a little while remembered,, 
what can the remembrance of mankind 
signify to him who once wore it ? Shake- 
speare, there is good reason to believe, set 
precisely the right value alike upon renown 
in his own time and the homage of pos- 
terity. Though he went forth, as the 
stormy impulses of his nature drove him, 
into the great world of London, and there 
laid the firm hand of conquest upon the 
spoils of wealth and power, he came back at 
last to the peaceful home of his childhood ; 
he strove to garner up the comforts and 
everlasting treasures of love at his own 
hearth-stone ; he sought an enduring monu- 
ment in the hearts of friends and com- 
panions ; and so he won for his stately 
sepulchre the garland not alone of glory, 
but of affection. Through the tall eastern 
window of the chancel of Holy Trinity 
church the morning sunshine, broken into 
many-coloured light, streams in upon the 
grave of Shakespeare, and gilds his bust 
upon the wall above it. He lies close by the 
altar, and every circumstance of his place Of 
burial is eloquent of his hold upon the affec- 
tionate esteem of his contemporaries, equally 



164 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

as a man, a Christian, and a famous poet. 
The line of graves beginning at the north 
wall of the chancel and extending across 
to the south seems devoted entirely to 
Shakespeare and his family, with but one 
exception. The pavement that covers them 
is of that blue-grey slate or freestone 
which in England is sometimes called black 
marble. In the first grave under the north 
wall rests Shakespeare's wife. The next is 
that of the poet himself, bearing the world- 
famed words of blessing and imprecation. 
Then comes the grave of Thomas Nashe, 
husband to Elizabeth Hall, the poet's grand- 
daughter. Next is that of Dr. John Hall, 
husband to his daughter Susanna, and close 
beside him rests Susanna herself. The 
gravestones are laid east and west, and all 
but one present inscriptions. That one is 
under the south wall, and possibly it covers 
the dust of Judith — Mrs. Thomas Quiney 
— the youngest daughter of Shakespeare, 
who, surviving her three children, and thus 
leaving no descendants, died in 1662. Upon 
the gravestone of Susanna an inscription has 
been intruded commemorative of Richard 
Watts, who is not, however, known to have 
had any relationship with either Shake- 
speare or his descendants. Shakespeare's 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 65 

father, who died in 1601, and his mother, 
Mary Arden, who died in 1608, were, it is 
thoiTght, buried somewhere in this church. 
His infant sisters Joan, Margaret, and 
Anne, and his brother Richard, who died, 
aged thirty-nine, in 1613, may also have 
been laid to rest in this place. Of the death 
and burial of his brother Gilbert there is no 
record. His sister Joan, the second — Mrs. 
Hart — would naturally have been placed 
with her relatives. His brother Edmund, 
dying in 1607, aged twenty-seven, is under 
the pavement of St. Saviour's church in 
Southwark. The boy Haranet, dying before 
his father had risen into much local emin- 
ence, rests, probably, in an undistinguished 
grave in the churchyard. The family of 
Shakespeare seems to have been short-lived, 
and it was soon extinguished. He himself 
died at fifty-two. Judith's children all 
perished young, Susanna bore but one 
child — Elizabeth — who became successively 
Mrs. Nashe and Lady Barnard, and she, 
dying in 1670, was buried at Abingdon, near 
Oxford. She left no children by either hus- 
band, and in her the race of Shakespeai'e 
became extinct. That of Anne Hathaway 
also has nearly disappeared, the last living 
descendant of the Hathaway s being Mrs. 



1 66 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

Baker, the present occupant of Anne's cot- 
tage at Shottery. Thus, one by one, from the 
pleasant gardened town of Stratford, they 
went to take up their long abode in that old 
church, which was ancient even in their in- 
fancy, and which, watching through the cen- 
turies in its monastic solitude on the shore of 
Avon, has seen their lands and houses devas- 
tated by flood and fire, the places that knew 
them changed by the tooth of time, and almost 
all the associations of their lives obliterated 
by the improving hand of destruction. 

One of the oldest and most interesting 
Shakespearean documents in existence is the 
narrative, by a traveller named Dowdall, of 
his observations in Warwickshire, and of his 
visit, on April 10, 1693, to Stratford church. 
He describes therein the bust and the tomb- 
stone of Shakespeare, and be adds these re- 
markable words: "The clerk that showed 
me this church is above eighty years old. 
He says that not one, for fear of the curse 
above said, dare touch his gravestone, 
though his wife and daughter did earnestly 
desire to be laid in tlie same grave with 
him." Writers in modern days have been 
pleased to disparage that inscription and to 
conjecture that it was the work of a sexton 
and not of the poet ; but no one denies tliat 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 67 

it has accomplished its purpose in preserv- 
ing the sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its 
rugged strength, its simple pathos, its fit- 
ness, and its sincerity make it felt as un- 
questionably the utterance of Shakespeare 
himself, when it is read upon the slab that 
covers him. Tiiere the musing traveller full 
well conceives how dearly the poet must 
have loved the beautiful scenes of his birth- 
place, and with what intense longing he 
must have desired to sleep undisturbed in 
the most sacred spot in their bosom. He 
doubtless had some premonition of his ap- 
proaching death. Three months before it 
came he drafted his will. A little later he 
attended to the marriage of his younger 
daugliter. Within less than a month of 
his death lie executed the will, and thus set 
his affairs in order. His handwriting in tlie 
three signatures to that paper conspicuously 
exhibits the uncertainty and lassitude of 
shattered nerves. He was probably quite 
worn out. Within the space, at the utmost, 
of twenty-five years, he had written thirty- 
seven plays, one hundred and fifty-four 
sonnets, and two or more long poems ; had 
passed through much and painful toil and 
through many sorrows ; had made his for- 
tune as author, actor, and manager ; and 



1 68 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

had superintended, to excellent advantage, 
his property in London and his large estates 
in Stratford and its neighbourhood. The 
proclamation of health with which the -will 
begins was doubtless a formality of legal 
custom. The story that he died of drinking 
too hard at a merry meeting with Drayton 
and Ben Jonson is idle gossip. If in 
those last days of fatigue and presentiment 
he wrote the epitaph that has ever since 
marked his grave, it would naturally have 
taken the plainest fashion of speech. Such, 
at all events, is its character ; and no 
pilgrim to the poet's shrine could wish to 
see it changed : — 

* ' Good frend for lesvs sake forbeare. 
To digg the clvst encloased heare ; 
Blese be yo man y* spares thes stones 
And cvrst be he y* moves my bones." 

It was once surmised that the poet's 
solicitude lest his bones might be disturbed 
in death grew out of his intention to take 
with him into the grave a confession that 
the works which now "follow him" were 
written by another hand. Persons have 
been found who actually believe that a man 
who was great enough to write Havilet 
could be little enough to feel ashamed of it, 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 69 

and, accordingly, that Shakespeare was only 
hired to play at authorship as a screen for 
the actual author. It might not, perhaps, 
be strange that a desire for singularity, 
which is one of the worst literary fashions 
of this capricious age, should prompt to the 
rejection of the conclusive and overwhelm- 
ing testimony to Shakespeare's genius which 
has been left by Shakespeare's contempor- 
aries, and which shines out in all that is 
known of his life. It is strange that a 
doctrine should get itself asserted which is 
subversive of common reason and contra- 
dictory to every known law of the human 
mind. This conjectural confession of poetic 
imposture, of course, has never been ex- 
humed. There came a time in the present 
century when, as they were making repairs 
in the chancel pavement of the Holy Trinity 
(the entire chancel was renovated in 1834), 
a rift was accidentally made in the Shake- 
speare vault. Through this, though not 
without misgiving, the sexton peeped in upon 
the poet's remains. He saw all that was 
there, and he saw nothing but a pile of dust. 
The antique font from which the infant 
Shakespeare must have received the sacred 
water of Christian baptism is still preserved 
in this church. It was thrown aside and 



170 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 

replaced by a uew one about the middle of 
the seventeenth century. Many years after- 
ward it was found in the charnel-house. 
When that was destroyed it was cast into 
the churchyard. In later times the parish 
clerk used it as a trough to his pump. It 
passed then through the hands of sev^eral 
successive owners, till at last, in days that 
had learned to value the past and the associa- 
tions connected with its illustrious names, 
it found its way back again to the sanctuary 
from which it had suffered such a rude ex- 
pulsion. It is still a handsome stone, though 
somewhat soiled and marred. 

On the north wall of the chancel, above 
his grave, and near to "the American 
window," is placed Shakespeare's monu- 
ment. It is known to have been erected 
there within seven years after his death. It 
consists of a half-length effigy, placed be- 
neath a fretted arch, with entablature and 
pedestal, between two Corinthian columns 
of black marble, gilded at base and top. 
Above the entablature appear the armorial 
bearings of Shakespeare — a pointed spear on 
A. bend sable and a silver falcon on a tas- 
selled helmet supporting a spear. Over 
this heraldic emblem is a death's-head, and 
on each side of it sits a carven cherub, one 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEAEE. I71 

holding a spade, the other au inverted torch. 
In front of the effigy is a cushion, upon 
which both hands rest, holding a scroll and 
a pen. Beneath is an inscription in Latin 
and English, supposed to have been fur- 
nished by the poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall. 
The bust was cut by Gerard Johnson, a 
native of Amsterdam and by occupation a 
' ' tomb-maker. " The material is a soft 
stone, and the work, when first set up, was 
painted in the colours of life. Its peculi- 
arities indicate that it was copied from a 
mask of the features taken after death. 
Many persons believe that this mask has 
since been found, and busts of Shake- 
speare have been based upon it, by W. 
R. O'Donovan and by William Page. In 
September 1746, John Ward, grandfather of 
Mrs, Siddons, having come to Stratford with 
a theatrical company, gave a performance of 
Othello in the Guildhall, and devoted its 
proceeds to reparation of the Gerard John- 
son effigy, then some\vhat damaged by time. 
The original colours were then carefully re- 
stored and freshened. In 1793, under the 
direction of Malone, this bust, together 
with the image of John Combe — a recum- 
bent statue near the eastern wall of the 
chancel — was coated with white paint. 



172 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

From that plight it was extricated a few 
years ago by the assiduous skill of Simon 
Collins, who immersed it in a bath which 
took ofif the white paint and restored the 
colours. The eyes are painted a light hazel, 
the hair and pointed beard auburn, the 
face and hands flesh-tint. The dress con- 
sists of a scarlet doublet, with a rolling 
collar, closely buttoned down the front, 
worn under a loose black gown without 
sleeves. The upper part of the cushion is 
green, the lower part crimson, and this ob- 
ject is ornamented with gilt tassels. The 
stone pen that used to be in the right hand 
of the bust was taken from it toward the 
end of the last century by a young Oxford 
student, and being dropped by him upon 
the pavement was broken. A quill pen 
has been put in its place. This is the in- 
scription beneath the bust : — 

Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, popvlvs meeret, Olympvs habet. 

Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast ? 
Kead, if thov canst, whom euviovs Death hath 

plast 
Within this monvment : Shakspeare : with 

whome 
Qvick Natvre dide ; whose name doth deck y^ 

tombe 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 73 

Far more than cost ; sietli all y* he hath writt 
Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt. 

Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. ^tatis 53. Die. 23. Ap. 

The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, 
monasteries, and churches of England must, 
of course, have been accomplished, little 
by little, in laborious exertion protracted 
through many years, Stratford church, pro- 
bably more than seven centuries old, pre- 
sents a mixture of architectural styles, in 
which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace 
are beautifully mingled. Diflferent parts of 
the structure were, doubtless, built at dif- 
ferent times. It is fashioned in the custom- 
ary crucial form, with a square tower, a six- 
sided spire, and a fretted battlement all 
around its roof. Its windows are Gothic. 
The approach to it is across an old church- 
yard thickly sown with graves, through a 
lovely green avenue of lime-trees, leading to 
a carven porch on its north side. This 
avenue of foliage is said to be the copy of 
one that existed there in Shakespeare's day, 
through which he must often have walked, 
and through which at last he was carried 
to his grave. Time itself has fallen asleep 
in this ancient place. The low sob of the 
organ only deepens the awful sense of its 



174 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

silence and its dreamless repose. Beeches, 
yews, and elms grow in the churchyard, 
and many a low tomb and many a leaning 
stone are there in the shadow, grey with 
moss and mouldering with age. Birds have 
l)uilt their nests in many crevices in the time- 
worn tower, round Avhich at sunset you maj- 
see them circle, with chirp of greeting or with 
call of anxious discontent. Near by flows 
the peaceful river, reflecting the grey spire in 
its dark, silent, shining waters. In the long 
and lonesome meadows beyond it the prim- 
roses stand in their golden banks among the 
clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the 
cowslip, hiding its single drop of blood in its 
bosom, closes its petals as the night comes 
down. 

Northward, at a little distance from the 
Church of the Holy Trinity, stands, on the 
west bank of the Avon, the building which 
Avill always be famous as the Shakespeare 
Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was 
first suggested in 1864, incidentally to tlie 
ceremonies which then commemorated the 
three-hundredth anniversary of the poet's 
birth. Ten years later the site for this noble 
structure was presented to the town by 
Charles E. Flower, Esq., one of its wealthy 
inhabitants. Contributions of money were 



THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 1 75 

then asked, and were li])erally given. 
Americans as well as Englishmen gave large 
sums. On the 23d of April 1877, the first 
stone of the Memorial was laid. On the 23d 
of April 1880, the building was dedicated. 
The structure comprises a theatre, a library, 
and a picture-gallery. In the theatre the 
plays of Shakespeare are from time to time 
represented, in a manner as nearly perfect 
as possible. In the library and picture- 
gallery are to be assembled all the books- 
upon Shakespeare tliat ever have been pub- 
lished, and all the choice paintings that can 
be obtained to illustrate his life and lii& 
works. As the years pass this will naturally 
become the principal depository of Shake- 
spearean relics. A di'amatic college may 
grow up in association with the Shakespeare 
theatre. The gardens which surround the 
Memorial will augment their loveliness in 
added expanse of foliage and in greater 
wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow 
tinge of age will soften the bright tints of 
the red brick which maiidy composes the 
building. On its cone-shaped turrets ivy 
will clamber and moss will nestle. When a 
few generations have passed, the old town of 
Stratford will have adopted this now youth- 
ful stranger into the race of her venerated 



176 THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE. 

antiquities. The same air of poetic mystery 
which rests now upon his cottage and his 
grave will diffuse itself around his Memo- 
rial ; and a remote posterity, looking back 
to the men and the ideas of to-day, will re- 
member with grateful pride that English- 
speaking people of the nineteenth century, 
though they could confer no honour upon the 
great name of Shakespeare, yet honoured 
themselves in consecrating this beautiful 
temple to his memory. 



A 



UP TO LONDON. 177 



XIII. 

UP TO LONDON. 

18S2. 

BOUT the middle of the night the great 
ship comes to a pause, oft' the coast of 
Ireland, and, looking forth across the black 
waves, and through the rifts in the rising 
mist, we see the low and lonesome verge of 
that land of trouble and misery. A beauti- 
ful white light flashes now and then from 
the shore, and at intervals the mournful 
booming of a solemn bell floats over the sea. 
Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and 
then two or three dusky boats glide past 
the ship, and hoarse voices hail and answer. 
A few stars are visible in the hazj^ sky, and 
the breeze from the land brings off", in fitful 
puff's, the fragrant balm of grass and clover, 
mingled with the salt odours of sea-weed 
and slimy rocks. There is a sense of mys- 
tery over the whole wild scene ; but we 
realise now that hiiman companionship is 
near, and that the long and lonely ocean 
voyage is ended. 

s. E. M 



178 UP TO LONDON. 

Travellers who make the run from Liver- 
pool to London by the Midland Railway- 
pass through the Vale of Derby and skirt 
around the stately Peak that Scott has com- 
memorated in his novel of Peveril. It is a 
more rugged country than is seen in the 
transit by the North- Western road, but not 
more beautiful. You see the storied moun- 
tain, in all its delicacy of outline and all its 
airy magnificence of poise, soaring into the 
sky — its summit almost lost in the smoky 
haze — and you wind through hillside pas- 
tures and meadow-lands that are curiously 
intersected with low, zigzag stone walls ; 
and constantly, as the scene changes, you 
catch glimpses of green lane and shining 
river ; of dense copses that cast their cool 
shadow on the moist and gleaming emerald 
sod ; of long white roads that stretch away 
like cathedral aisles, and are lost beneath the 
leafy arches of elm and oak ; of little church 
turrets emboAvered in ivy ; of thatched cot- 
tages draped with roses ; of dark ravines, 
luxuriant with a wild profusion of rocks and 
trees ; and of golden grain that softly waves 
and whispers in the summer wind ; while, 
all around, the grassy banks and glimmering 
meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, 
and with that wonderful scarlet of the 



UP TO LONDON. 1 79 

poppj' which gives an ahiiost human glow 
of life and loveliness to the whole face of 
England. After some hours of such a 
pageant — so novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, 
so stimulative of eager curiosity and poetic 
desire — it is a relief at last to stand in the 
populous streets and among the grim houses 
of London, with its surging tides of life, and 
its turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and 
misery. How strange it seems — yet, at the 
same time, how homelike and familiar ! 
There soars aloft the great dome of St. 
Paul's Cathedral, with its golden cross that 
flashes in the sunset ! There stands the 
Victoria Tower — fit emblem of the true 
royalty of the sovereign whose name it 
bears. And there, more lowly but more 
august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. 
It is the same old London — the great heart 
of the modern world — the great city of our 
reverence and love. As the wanderer writes 
these words he hears the plashing of the 
fountains in Trafalgar Square and the even- 
ing chimes that peal out from the spire of 
St. Martin's -in -the -Fields, and he knows 
himself once more at the shrine of his youth- 
ful dreams. 

To the observant stranger in London few 
sights can be more impressive than those 



l80 UP TO LONDON. 

which illustrate the singular manner in 
which the life of the present encroaches 
upon the memorials of the past. Old 
Temple Bar has gone, and only a column, at 
the junction of Fleet Street and the Strand, 
denotes where once it stood. The Midland 
Railway trains dash over what was once St. 
Pancras Churchyard — the burial-place of 
Mary Wollstonecraft, and of many other 
British worthies — and passengers looking 
from the carriages may see the children of 
the neighbourhood sporting among the few 
tombs that yet remain in that despoiled 
cemetery. Dolly's Chop-House, intimately 
associated with the wits of the reign of 
Queen Anne, has been destroyed. The 
ancient tavern of "The Cock," immortalised 
by Tennyson, in his poem of " Will Water- 
proof's Monologue," is soon to disappear, — 
M^th its singular wooden hall that existed 
before the time of the Plague and that 
escaped the Great Fire of 1666. On the 
site of Northumberland House stands the 
Grand Hotel. The gravestones that for- 
merly paved the yard of Westminster Abbey 
have been removed, to make way for grassy 
lawns intersected with pathways. In South- 
wark, across the Thames, the engine-room 
of the brewery of Messrs. Barclay & Perkins 



UP TO LONDON. iSl 

occupies the site of the Globe Theatre, that 
Shakespeare managed. One of the most 
venerable and beautiful churches in London, 
that of St. Bartholomew the Great, — a grey, 
mouldering temple, of the twelfth century, 
hidden away in a corner of Smithfield, — is 
desecrated by the irruption of an adjacent 
shop, the staircase hall of which breaks 
cruelly into the sacred edifice and impends 
above the altar. As lately as the 12th of 
Jul}^ 1SS2, the present writer, walking in 
the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Gar- 
den, — the sepulchre of William Wycherley, 
Robert Wilks, Charles Macklin, Joseph 
Haines, Thomas King, Samuel Butler, 
Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, Dr. 
Arne, Thomas Davies, Edward Kynaston, 
Richard Estcourt, "William Havard, and 
many other renowned votaries of literature 
and the stage, — found workmen building a 
new wall to sustain the enclosure, and al- 
most every stone in the cemetery uprooted 
and leaning against the adjacent houses. 
These monuments, it was said, would be 
replaced ; but it was impossible not to 
consider the chances of error, in a new mor- 
tuary deal — and the grim witticism of Rufus 
Choate, about dilating with the wrong emo- 
tion, came then into remembrance, and did 
not come amiss. 



l82 UP TO LONDON. 

Facts such as these, however, bid us re- 
member how even the relics of the past are 
passing away, and that cities, unlike human 
creatures, may grow to be so old that at last 
they will become new. It is not wonderful 
that London should change its aspect from 
one decade to another, as the living sur- 
mount and obliterate the dead. Thomas 
Sutton's Charter-House School, founded in 
1611, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson 
were still writing, was reared upon ground 
in which several thousand corpses were 
buried, during the time of the Indian Pestil- 
ence of 1348 ; and it still stands and 
flourishes — though not as vigorously now 
as might be wished. Nine thousand new 
houses, it is said, are built in the great 
capital every year, and twenty-eight miles 
of new streets are thus added to it. On a 
Sunday I drove for three hours through the 
eastern part of London v/ithout coming 
upon a single trace of the open fields. On 
the west, all the region from Kensington to 
Richmond is settled for most part of the 
way ; while northward the city is stretching 
its arms toward Hampstead, Highgate, and 
tranquil and blooming Finchley. Truly 
the spirit of this age is in strong contrast 
with tliat of the time of Henry the Eighth 



UP TO LONDON. 183 

when (1580), to prevent the increasing size 
of London, all new buildings were forbidden 
to be erected ' * where no former hath been 
known to have been." The march of im- 
provement nowadays carries everything be- 
fore it : even British conservatism is at some 
points giving way : and, noting the changes 
which have occurred here within only five 
years, I am persuaded that those who would 
see what remains of the London of which 
thdy have read and dreamed — the London 
of Dryden and Pope, of Addison, Sheridan, 
and Byron, of Betterton, Garrick, and 
Edmund Kean — will, as time passes, find 
more and more difficulty both in tracing the 
footsteps of fame, and in finding that sym- 
pathetic, reverent spirit which hallows the 
relics of genius and renown. 



\Sa old churches of LONDON. 



XIV. 

OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 

SIGHT-SEEING, merely for its OMn sake, 
is not to be commended. Hundreds of 
persons roam through the storied places of 
England, carrying nothing away but the 
bare sense of travel. It is not the spectacle 
that benefits, but the meaning of the spec- 
tacle. In the great temples of religion, in 
those wonderful cathedrals which are the 
glory of the old world, we ought to feel, not 
merely the physical beauty, but the perfect, 
illimitable faith, the passionate, incessant 
devotion, which alone made them possible. 
The cold intellect of a sceptical age — like the 
present — could never create such a majestic 
cathedral as that of Canterbur3^ Not till 
the pilgrim feels this truth has he really 
learned the lesson of such places, — to keep 
alive in his heart the capacity of self-sacri- 
fice, of toil and of tears, for the grandeur and 
beauty of the spiritual life. At the tombs of 
great men we ought to feel something more 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 1 8$ 

than a consciousness of the crumbling clay 
that moulders within, — something more even 
than knowledge of their memorable words 
and deeds : Ave ought, as we ponder on the 
certainty of death and the evanescence of 
earthly things, to realise that Art at least 
is permanent, and that no creature can be 
better employed than in noble effort to make 
the soul worthy of immortality. The relics 
of the past, contemplated merely because 
they are relics, are nothing. You tire, in 
this old land, of the endless array of ruined 
castles and of wasting graves ; you sicken 
at the thought of the mortality of a thou- 
sand years, decaying at your feet, and you 
long to look again on roses and the face of 
childhood, the ocean and the stars. But 
not if the meaning of the past is truly with- 
in your sympathy; not if you perceive its 
associations as feeling equally with know- 
ledge ; not if you truly know that its lessons 
are not of death but of life ! To-day builds 
over the ruins of yesterday, as well in the 
soul of man as on the vanishing cities that 
mark his course. There need be no regret 
that, in this sense, the present should ob- 
literate the past. 

Much, however, as London has changed, 
and constantly as it continues to change, 



1 86 OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 

there still remain, and long will continue to 
remain, many objects that startle and im- 
press the sensitive mind. Through all its 
wide compass, by night and day, there ilows 
and beats a turbulent, resounding tide of 
activity, and hundreds of trivial and vacuous 
people, sordid, ignorant, and common -place, 
tramp to and fro amid its storied antiquities, 
heedless of their existence. Through such 
surroundings, but finding here and there a 
sympathetic guide or a friendly suggestion, 
the explorer must take his way, — lonely in 
the crowd, and walking, indeed, like one 
who lives in a dream. Yet he never will 
drift in vain through a city like this. I 
went, one night, into the cloisters of "West- 
minster Abbey — that part, the South Walk, 
which is still accessible after the gates have 
been closed. The stars shone down upon the 
blackening walls and glimmering windows 
of the great cathedral ; the grim, mysteri- 
ous arches were dimly lighted ; the stony 
pathways, stretching away beneatli the 
venerable building, seemed to lose them- 
selves in caverns of darkness ; not a sound 
was heard but the faint rustling of the grass 
upon the cloister green. Every stone here 
is the mark of a sepulchre ; every breath of 
the night-wind seemed the whisper of a 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 187 

gliding ghost. Here, among the crowded 
graves, rest Anne Oldfield and Anne Brace- 
girdle, — in Queen Anne's reign such bril- 
liant luminaries of the stage — and here 
was buried the dust of Aaron Hill, poet 
and dramatist, the old manager of Drury 
Lane, who wrote The Fair Inconstant for 
Barton Booth, and some notably sweet and 
felicitous love-songs. Here, too, are the 
relics of Susanna Maria Arne (Mrs. Theo. 
Gibber), Aphra Behn, Thomas Betterton, 
and Spranger Barry. Sitting upon the 
narrow ledge which was the monks' rest, 
I could touch, close at hand, the tomb of a 
mitred Abbot, while at my feet was the 
great stone that covers twenty-six monks of 
Westminster who perished by the Plague 
nearl}'^ six hundred years ago. It would 
scarcely be believed that the doors of dwell- 
ings open upon this gloomy spot ; that ladies 
may sometimes be seen tending flowers upon 
the ledges that roof these cloister walks. 
Yet so it is ; and in such a place, at such 
a time, you comprehend, better than be- 
fore, the self-centred, serious, ruminant, 
romantic character of the English mind, — 
which loves, more than anything else in the 
world, the privacy of august surroundings 
and a sombre and stately solitude. It need 



1 88 OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 

hardly be said that you likewise obtain here 
a striking sense of the power of contrast. I 
was again aware of this, a little later, when, 
seeing a dim light in St. Margaret's Church 
near by, I entered that old temple, and 
found the boys of the choir at their re- 
hearsal, and presently observed on the wall 
a brass plate which announces that Sir 
Walter Raleigh was buried here, in the 
chancel, after being decapitated for high 
treason in the Palace Yard outside. Such 
things are the surprises of this historic 
capital. This inscription begs the reader to 
remember Raleigh's virtues as well as his 
faults,— a plea, surely, that every man 
might well wish should be made for himself 
at last. I thought of the verses that the 
old warrior-poet is said to have left in his 
Bible, when they led him out to die — • 

" Even such is time ; that takes in trust 

Our youth, our joys, our all we have. 
And pays us nought but age and dust ; 

Which, in the dark and silent grave, 
When we have wandered all our ways, 

Shuts up the story of our days. — 
But from this earth, this grave, this dust, 

My God shall raise me up, I trust." 

Tills church contains a window commemo- 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 1 89 

rative of Raleigh, presented by Americans, 
and inscribed with these lines, by Lowell — 

" The New World's sous, from England's breast 
we drew 

Such milk as bids remember whence we came : 
Proud of her past, wlierefrom our future grew, 

This Avindow we inscribe with Kaleigh's name." 

It also contains a window commemora- 
tive of Caxton, presented by the printers 
and publishers of London, which is inscribed 
with these lines by Tennyson — 

"Thy prayer was Light — more Light — while 
Time shall last. 

Thou sawest a glory growing on the night, 
But not the shadows which that light would cast 

Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light." 

In St. Margaret's — a storied haunt, for 
shining names alike of nobles and poets — 
was also buried John Skelton, another of 
the old bards (obiit 1529), the enemy and 
satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas 
More, one of whom he described as "madde 
Amaleke," and the other as " dawcock 
doctor." Their renown has managed to 
survive these terrific shafts ; but at least 
this was a falcon who flew at eagles. Here 
the poet Campbell was married, — October 
11th, 1803. Such old churches as this — 



190 OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 

guarding so well their treasures of history — 
are, in a special sense, the traveller's bless- 
ings. At St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor 
is a woman ; and she will point out to you 
the lettered stone that formerly marked the 
grave of Milton, It is in the nave, but it has 
been moved to a place about twelve feet from 
its original position, — the remains of the 
illustrious poet being, in fact, beneath the 
floor of a pew, on the left of the central aisle, 
about the middle of the church : albeit there 
is a story, possibly true, that, on an occasion 
when this church was repaired, in August 
1790, the coffin of Milton suffered profana- 
tion, and his bones were dispersed. Among 
the monuments hard by is a fine marble 
bust of Milton, placed against the wall, and 
it is said, by way of enhancing its value, 
that Geoi'ge the Third came here to see it. 
Several of the neighbouring inscriptions are 
of astonishing quaintness. They claim the 
dust of Daniel De Foe for this church, but 
cannot designate his grave. The adjacent 
churchyard — a queer, irregular, sequestered, 
lonesome bit of grassy ground, teeming with 
monuments, and hemmed in with houses, 
terminates, at one end, in a piece of the old 
Roman wall of London (a.d. 306), — an ada- 
mantine structure of cemented flints — which 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. IQI 

has lasted from the days of Julius Ceesar, and 
which bids fair to last for ever. I shall 
always remember this strange nook with the 
golden light of a summer morning shining 
upon it, the birds twittering among itfc 
graves, and all around it such an atmosphere 
of solitude and rest as made it seem, though 
in the heart of the great city, a thousand 
miles from any haunt of man. 

St. Helen's, Bishopgate, an ancient and 
venerable temple, the church of the priory 
of the nuns of St, Helen, built in the 
thirteenth century, is full of relics of the his- 
tory of England. The priory, which adjoined 
this church, has long since disappeared, and 
portions of the building have been restored ; 
but the noble Gothic columns and the com- 
memorative sculpture remain unchanged. 
Here are the tombs of Sir John Crosby, 
who built Crosby Place (14G6), Sir Thomas 
Gresham, who founded both Gresham College 
and the Royal Exchange in London, and Sir 
William Pickering, once Queen P^.lizabeth's 
IMinister to Spain and one of the amorous 
aspirants for her royal hand ; and here, in a 
gloomy chapel, stands the veritable altar at 
which the cruel and crafty Duke of Gloster 
received absolution, after he had despatched 
the princes in the Tower. Standing at that 



192 OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 

altar, in the cool silence of the lonely church 
and the waning light of afternoon, it was 
easy to conjure up his slender, missliapen 
form, decked out in the rich apparel that 
he loved, his handsome, aquiline, thoughtful 
face, the drooping head, the glittering, bale- 
ful eyes, the nervous hand that toyed with 
the dagger, and the stealthy stillness of his 
person, from head to foot, as he knelt there 
before the priest and mocked himself and 
lieaven with the form of prayer. Every 
place that Richard touched is haunted by 
his magnetic presence : no place more 
strangely so than this ! In another part 
of the church you are shown .the tomb of 
a person whose will provided that the key 
of his sepulchre should be placed beside 
his body, and that the door should be opened 
once a year, for a hundred years. It seems 
to have been his expectation to awake and 
arise ; but the allotted century has passed 
and his bones are still quiescent. 

How calmly they sleep — these warriors 
who once filled the world with the tumult of 
their deeds ! If you go into St. Mary's, in 
the Temple, — one of the finest Gothic 
buildings in England, — you will stand above 
the dust of the Crusaders, and mark the 
beautiful copper effigies of them, recumbent 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 1 93 

on the marble pavement, and feel and know, 
as perhaps you never did before, the calm 
that follows the tempest. Samt Mary's was 
built in 1240, and restored in 1828. It 
would be difficult to find a lovelier speci- 
men of Norman Gothic architecture — at once 
massive and airy, perfectly simple, yet rich 
with beauty, in e\'ery line and scroll. There 
is only one other church in Great Britain, it 
is said, which has, like this, a circular vesti- 
bule. The stained glass windows, both here 
and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The 
organ at St. Mary's was selected by Jeffreys, 
afterwards infamous as the wicked judge. 
The pilgrim who pauses to muse at the grave 
of Goldsmith may often hear its solemn, 
mournful tones. I heard them thus, and 
was thinking of Doctor Johnson's tender 
words, when he first learned that Goldsmith 
was dead: "Poor Goldy was wild — very 
wild — but he is so no more." The room in 
which he died, a broken-heai'ted man at only 
forty -six, was but a little way from the spot 
where he sleeps.^ The noises of Fleet Street 

1 No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple.— In 1757-58 
Goldsmith was employed by a chemist, near Fish Street 
Hill. "When he Avrote his Inquiry into the Present 
State of Polite Learning in Europe he was living in 
Green Arbour Court, "over Break-neck Steps." At a 

S.£. N 



194 OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. 

are heard there only as a distant murmur. 
But birds chirp over him, and leaves flutter 
down upon his tomb, and every breeze that 
sighs around the grey turrets of the ancient 
Temple breathes out his requiem. 

lodging in "Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, he wrote 
The Vicar of Wakefield. Afterwards he had lodg- 
ings at Canonbury House, Islington, and in 1764, in 
the Library Staircase of the Inner Temple. 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. I95 



XV. 

LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 

THE mind that can reverence historic 
associations needs no explanation of the 
charm that such associations possess. There 
are streets and houses in London which, for 
pilgrims of this class, are haunted with 
memories and hallowed with an imperish- 
able light — that not even the dreary com- 
monness of everyday life can quench or dim. 
Almost every great author in English litera- 
ture has here left behind him some personal 
trace, some relic that brings us at once into 
his living presence. In the days of Shake- 
speare, — of whom it may be noted that 
wherever you find him at all you find him 
in select and elegant neighbourhoods, — 
Bishopgate was a retired and aristocratic 
quarter of the town ; and here the poet had 
his residence, convenient to the theatre in 
Blackfriars, of which he was an owner. It 
is said that he dwelt very near to Crosby 
Place, and certainly he saw that building in 



196 LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 

its splendour, and, no doubt, was often in 
St. Helen's Church, near by ; and upon this 
spot, — amid all the din of traffic and all the 
strange adjuncts of a new age, — those who 
love him are in his company. Milton was 
born in a court adjacent to Bread Street, 
Oheapside, and the explorer comes upon him 
as a resident in St. Bride's Churchyard, — 
where the poet Lovelace was buried, — and 
at the house which is now No. 19 York 
Street, Westminster (in later times occu- 
pied by Bentham and by Hazlitt), and in 
Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When Secretary 
to Cromwell he lived in Scotland Yard, 
where now is the headquarters of the London 
police. His last home was in Artillery 
Walk, Bunhill Fields, but the visitor to 
that spot finds it covered by the Artillery 
Barracks. Walking through King Street, 
Westminster, you will not forget Edmvind 
Spenser, who died there, in grief and desti- 
tution, a victim to the same inhuman spirit 
of Irish ruffianism which is still disgracing 
humanity and troubling the peace of the 
world. Everybody remembers Ben Jonson's 
terse record of this calamity: "The Irish 
having robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his 
house and a little child new-born, he and his 
wife escaped, and after, he died, for lack of 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. I97 

bread, in King Street." Jonson himself is 
closely and charmingly associated with places 
that may still be seen. He passed his boy- 
hood near Charing Cross — having been born 
in Hartshorne Lane, now Northumberland 
Street — and went to the parish school of St. 
Martin's-in-the-Fields ; and those who roam 
aronnd Lincoln's Inn will surely call to mind 
that this great poet helped to build it — a 
trowel in one hand and Horace in the other. 
His residence, in his days of fame, was just 
outside of Temple Bar — but all that neigh- 
bourhood is new at the present day. 

The Mermaid, which he frequented — with 
Shakespeare, Fletcher, Herrick, Chapman, 
and Donne — was in Bread Street, but no 
trace of it remains ; and a banking-house 
(Child's Bank) stands now on the site of the 
Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, where the 
Apollo Club, wliich he founded, used to 
meet. The famous inscription, ' ' rare Ben 
Jonson," is three times cut in the Abbey — 
once in Poets' Corner, and twice in the north 
aisle where he was buried, the smaller of the 
two slabs marking the place of his vertical 
grave. Dryden once dwelt in a narrow, 
dingy, quaint little house, in Fetter Lane, — 
the street in which Dean Swift has placed 
the home of Gulliver, and where now the 



198 LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 

famous Doomsday Book is kept, — but later 
he removed to a finer dwelling, in Gerrard 
Street, Soho, which was the scene of his 
death. Both buildings are marked with 
mural tablets, and neither of them seems to 
have undergone much change. Edmund 
Bvirke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is let 
in lodgings and licensed to sell beer ; but 
his memory hallows the place, and an in- 
scription upon it proudly announces that 
here he lived. Dr. Johnson's house in 
Gough Square bears likewise a mural tablet, 
and, standing at its time-worn threshold, 
the visitor needs no effort of fancy to pic- 
ture that uncouth figure shambling through 
the crooked lanes that lead into this queer, 
sombre, confined, and melancholy retreat. 
In this house he wrote the first Dictionary 
of the English language and the immortal 
letter to Lord Chesterfield. In Gough 
Square lived and died Hugh Kelly, drama- 
tist, author of The School of Wii'es and 
The Man of Reason, and one of the friends 
of Goldsmith, at whose burial he was pre- 
sent. The historical antiquarian society 
that has marked many of the literary shrines 
of London has, surely, rendered a great 
service. The houses associated with Rey- 
nolds and Hogarth, in Leicester Square, 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 1 99 

Byron, in Holies Street, Benjamin Franklin 
and Peter the Great, in Craven Street, 
Campbell, in Duke Street, St. James's, 
Garrick, in the Adelphi Terrace, and Mrs. 
Siddons, in Baker Street, are but a few of 
the historic spots which are thus commem- 
orated. Much, however, yet remains to be 
done. One would like to know, for instance, 
in which room in "The Albany" it was 
that Byron wrote Lara} in which of the 
houses in Buckingham Street Coleridge had 
his lodging while he was translating Wal- 
lensteln ; whereabouts in Bloomsbury Square 
was the residence of Akenside, who wrote 
The Pleasures of Imagination, and of Croly, 

1 Byron was born at No. 24 Holies Street, Cavendish 
Square. While he was at school in Dulwich Grove his 
mother lived in a house in Sloane Terrace. Other 
houses associated with him are No. 8 St. James Street ; 
a lodging in Bennet Street; No. 2 "The Albany"— a 
lodging that he rented of Lord Althorpe, and moved 
into on March 2Sth, 1814; and No. 139 Piccadilly, 
where his daughter, Ada, was born, and where Lady 
Byron left him. This, at present, is the home of the 
genial scholar Sir Algernon Borthwick (18S5). John 
Murray's house, where Byron's fragment of Autobio- 
graphy was burned, is still on the same spot in Albe- 
marle Street. Byron's body, when brought home from 
Greece, lay in state at No. 25 Great George Street, 
Westminster, before being taken north, to Hucknall- 
Torkard Church, in Nottinghamshire, for burial. 



200 LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 

who wrote Salathkl ; or where it was 
that Gray lived, when he established him- 
self close by Russell Square, in order to 
be one of the first — as he continued to be 
one of the most constant — students at the 
then newly opened British Museum (1759). 
These, and such as these, may seem trivial 
things ; but Nature has denied an unfailing 
source of innocent happiness to the man who 
can find no pleasure in them. For my part, 
when rambling in Fleet Street it is a special 
delight to remember even so slight an inci- 
dent as that recorded of the author of the 
"Elegy in a Country Churchyard," — that 
he once saw there his satirist. Dr. Johnson, 
rolling and puffing along the sidewalk, and 
cried out to a friend, " Here comes Ursa 
Major." For the true lovers of literature 
" Ursa Major " walks oftener in Fleet Street 
to-day than any living man. 

A good thread of literary research might 
be profitably followed by him who should 
trace the footsteps of all the poets that have 
held, in England, the office of laureate. John 
Kay was laureate in the reign of Edward 
IV. ; Andrew Bernard in that of Henry vii. ; 
John Skelton in that of Henry viii. ; and 
Edmund Spenser in that of Elizabeth. Since 
then the succession has included the names 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 201 

of Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben 
Jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dry- 
den, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicho- 
las Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley Gibber, 
William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry 
James Pye, Robert Southey, William Words- 
worth, and Alfred Tennyson — the latter still 
wearing, in spotless renown, that 

" Laurel greeuer i'rom the brows 
Of him that uttered nothing base." 

Most of these bards were intimately asso- 
ciated with London, and several of them 
are buried in the Abbey. It is, indeed, be- 
cause so many storied names are written 
upon gravestones that tlie explorer of the 
old churches of London finds so rich a har- 
vest of impressive association and lofty 
thought. Few persons visit them, and 
you are likely to find yourself compara- 
tively alone in rambles of this kind. I 
went one morning into St. Martin's — once 
" in the fields," now in one of the busiest 
thoroughfares at the centre of the city — and 
found there only a pew-opener preparing for 
the service, and an organist playing an an- 
them. It is a beautiful structure, with its 
graceful spire and its columns of weather 
beaten stone, curiously stained in grey and 



202 LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 

sooty black, and it is almost as famous for 
theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent Gar- 
den, or St. George's, Bloomsbury, or St. 
Clement Danes. Here, in a vault be- 
neath the church, was buried the bewitching 
and large-hearted Nell Gwyn ; here is the 
grave of James Smith, joint author with 
his brother Horace — who was buried at 
Tunbridge Wells — of The Rejected Ad- 
dresses; here rests Yates, the original Sir 
Oliver Surface ; and here were laid the 
ashes of the romantic and brilliant Mrs. 
Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom 
neither youth, genius, patient labour, nor 
sterling achievement could save from a life 
of misfortune and an untimely and piteous 
<leath. A cheerier association of this church 
is with Thomas Moore, the poet of Ireland, 
who was here married. At St. Giles's-iu- 
the-Fields, again, are the graves of George 
Chapman, who translated Homer, Andi-ew 
Marvel, who wrote such lovely lyrics of 
love, Eich, the manager, who brought out 
Gay's Beggars' Opera, and James Shirley, 
the fine old dramatist and poet, whose im- 
mortal couplet has been so often murmured 
in such solemn haunts as these — 
" Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON. 203 

Shirley lived in Gray's Inn when he was 
writing his plays, and he was fortunate in 
the favour of Queen Henrietta Maria, wife 
to Charles the First ; but, when the Puritan 
times came in, he fell into misfortune and 
poverty, and became a school-teacher in 
Whitefriars. In 1666 he was living in or 
near Fleet Street, and his home was one of 
the many dwellings that were destroyed in 
the Great Fire. Then he fled, witli his 
wife, into the parish of St. Giles's-in-the 
Fields, where, overcome with grief and 
terror, they both died, within twenty-four 
hours of each other, and they were buried 
in the same grave. 



204 A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 



T 



XVI. 

A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 

muse over the dust of those about 
whom we have read so much — the great 
actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors 
and statesmen for whom the play is ended 
and the lights are put out — is to come very 
near to them, and to realise more deeply 
than ever before their close relationship 
with our own humanity ; and we ought to 
be wiser and better for this experience. It 
is good, also, to seek out the favourite 
haunts of our heroes, and call them up as 
they were in their lives. One of the happi- 
est accidents of a London stroll was the 
finding of the Harp Tavern,^ in Russell 
Street, Covent Garden, near the stage door 

1 An account of the "Harp" in the Vichiallers' 
Gazette says that this tavern has had within its doors 
every actor of note since the days of Garrick, and 
many actresses, also, of the period of eighty or a hun- 
dred years ago ; and it mentions as visitants here Dora 
Jordan, Nance Oldfield, Anne Bracegirdle, Kitty Clive, 



A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 205 

of Drury Lane Theatre, which was the ac- 
customed resort of Edmund Kean. Car- 
penters and masons were at work upon it 
when I entered, and it was necessary almost 
to creep amid heaps of broken mortar and 
rubbish beneath their scaffolds, in order to 
reach the interior rooms. Here, at the end 
of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, 
perhaps fifteen feet square, with a low 
ceiling and a bare floor, in which Kean 
habitually took his pleasure, in the society 
of fellow-actors and boon companions, long 
ago. A narrow, cushioned bench against 
the walls, a few small tables, a chair or two, 
a number of churchwarden pipes on the 
mantelpiece, and portraits of Disraeli and 
Gladstone, constituted the furniture. A 
panelled wainscot and dingy red paper 
covered the walls, and a few cobwebs hung 
from the grimy ceiling. By this time the 
old room has been cleaned, repapered and 
made neat and comely ; but then it bore all 
the marks of hard usage and long neglect, 
and it seemed all the more interesting for 
that reason. 

Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, 

Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth, Quin, Gibber, Macklin, 
Grimaldi, Mme. Vestris, and Miss Stephens— who be- 
came Coimtess of Essex. 



206 A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 

and just above it a mural tablet designates 
the spot, — which is still further commemo- 
rated by a death-mask of the actor, placed 
on a little shelf of dark wood and covered 
with glass. No better portrait coiild be de- 
sired ; certainly no better one exists. In 
life this must have been a glorious face. 
The eyes are large and prominent, the brow 
is broad and fine, the mouth wide and ob- 
viously sensitive, the chin delicate, and the 
nose long, well set, and indicative of im- 
mense force of character. The whole ex- 
pression of the face is that of refinement and 
of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as is 
known from the testimony of one who acted 
with him,^ was always at his best in pas- 
sages of pathos. To hear him speak Othello's 
farewell was to hear the perfect music of 
heart-broken despair. To see him when, as 
The Stranger, he listened to the song, was 
to see the genuine, absolute reality of hope- 

1 The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described 
Edmund Kean in this way. She was a member of the 
company at the Wfilnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, 
when he acted there, and it was she who sang for him 
the well-known lines— 

"I have a silent sorrow here, 
A grief I '11 ne'er impart ; 
It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear, 
But it consumes my heart." 



A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 207" 

less sorrow. He could, of course, thrill 
mankind in the ferocious outbursts of Rich- 
ard and Sir Giles, but it was in tenderness 
and grief that he was supremely great ; and 
no one will wonder at this who looks upon 
his noble face — so eloquent of self-conilict 
and suffering — even in this cold and colour- 
less mask of death. It is easy to judge and 
condemn the sins of a weak, passionate hu- 
manity ; but when we think of such crea- 
tures of genius as Edmund Kean and Robert 
Burns, we ought to consider what demons in 
their own souls those wretched men were 
forced to fight, and by what agonies they 
expiated their vices and errors. This little 
tavern-room tells the whole mournful storj', 
with death to point the moral, and pity tO' 
breathe its sigh of unavailing regret. 

Many of the present frequenters of the 
Harp are elderly men, whose conversation 
is enriched with memories of the stage and 
with ample knowledge and judicious taste 
in literature and art. They naturally speak 
with pride of Kean's association with their 
favourite resort. Often in that room the 
eccentric genius has put himself in pawn, 
to exact from the manager of Drury Lane 
Theatre the money needed to relieve the 
wants of some brother actor. Often his 



208 A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 

voice has been heard there, in the songs 
that he sang with so much feeling and 
sweetness and such homely yet beautiful 
skill. In the circles of the learned and 
courtly he never was really at home ; but 
here he filled the throne and ruled the 
kingdom of the revel, and here no doubt 
every mood of his mind, from high thought 
and generous emotion to misanthropical 
bitterness and vacant levity, found its un- 
fettered expression. They show you a 
broken panel in the high wainscot, which 
was struck and smashed by a pewter pot 
that he hurled at the head of a person who 
had given him offence ; and they tell you, 
at the same time, — as, indeed, is historically 
true, — that he was the idol of his comrades, 
the first in love, pity, sympathy, and kind- 
ness, and would turn his back, any day, for 
the least of them, on the nobles who sought 
his companionship. There is no better place 
than this in which to study the life of 
Edmund Kean. Old men may be met with 
here who saw him on the stage, and even 
acted with him. The room is the weekly 
meeting-place and habitual nightly tryst of 
an ancient club, called the City of Lushing- 
ton, which has existed since the days of the 
Regency, and of which these persons are 



A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 209 

members. The City has its Mayor, Sheriff, 
insignia, record-book, and system of cere- 
monials ; and much of wit, wisdom, and 
song may be enjoyed at its civic feasts. 
The names of its four wards— Lunacy, 
Suicide, Poverty, and Juniper — are written 
up in the four corners of the room, and who- 
ever joins must select his ward. Sheridan 
was a member of it, and so was the Regent ; 
and the present landlord of the Harp [Mr. 
M'Pherson] preserves among his relics the 
chairs in which these gay companions sat, 
when the author presided over the initiation 
of the prince. It is thought that this club 
originated, in fact, out of the society of 
"The Wolves," which was formed by 
Kean's adherents, when the elder Booth 
arose to disturb his supremacy upon the 
stage. But there is no malignity in it now. 
Its purposes are simply convivial and lite- 
rar}', and its tone is that of thorough good- 
will. 

One of the gentlest and most winning 
traits in the English character is its instinct 
of companionship as to literature and. art. 
Since the days of the Mermaid, the authors 
and actors of London have dearly loved and 
deeply enjoyed such odd little fraternities 
of wit as are typified, not inaptly, by the 



2IO A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. 

City of Lushington. There are no rosier 
hours in my memory than those that were 
passed, between midnight and morning, in 
the cosy clubs in London. And, when 
dark days come, and foes harass, and the 
troubles of life annoy, it will be sweet to 
think that, in still another sacred retreat of 
friendship, across the sea, the old armour is 
gleaming in the festal lights, where one of 
the gentlest spirits that ever wore the laurel 
of England's love smiles kindly on his com- 
rades, and seems to murmur the mystical 
spell of English hospitality — 

** Let no one take beyond this threshold hence 
Words uttered here in friendship's confidence. " 



STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 21! 



XVII. 

STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 

IT is a cool afternoon in Julj'', and the 
shadows are falling eastward on fields 
of waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet. 
Overhead a few light clouds are drifting, 
and the green boughs of the great elms are 
gently stirred by a breeze from the west. 
Across one of the more distant fields a flock 
of sable rooks — some of them fluttering and 
cawing — wings its slow and melancholy 
flight. There is the sound of the whetting 
of a scythe, and, near by, the twittering of 
many birds upon a cottage roof. On either 
side of the country road, which runs like a 
white rivulet through banks of green, the 
hawthorn hedges are shining, and the bright 
sod is spangled with all the wild-flowers of 
an English summer. An odour of lime-trees 
and of new-mown hay sweetens the air for 
miles and miles around. Far off", on the 
horizon's verge, just glimmering through 
the haze, rises the imperial citadel of Wind- 



212 STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 

sor. And close at hand a little child points 
to a grey spire peering out of a nest of ivy, 
and tells me that this is Stoke-Pogis Church 
If peace dwells anywhere iipon this earth 
its dwelling-place is here. You come into 
this little churchyard by a pathway across 
the park, and through a wooden turnstile ; 
and in one moment the whole world is left 
behind and forgotten. Here are the nod- 
ding elms ; here is the yew-tree's shade ; 
here "heaves the turf in many a moulder- 
ing heap." All these graves seem very old. 
The long grass waves over them, and some 
of the low stones that mark them are en- 
tirely shrouded with ivy. Many of the 
' 'frail memorials" are made of wood. None 
of them is neglected or forlorn, but all of 
them seem to have been scattered here, in 
that sweet disorder which is the perfection 
of rural loveliness. There never, of course, 
could have been any thought of creating 
this effect ; yet here it remains, to win your 
heart for ever. And here, amid this mourn- 
ful beauty, the little church itself nestles 
close to the ground, while every tree 
that waves its branches around it, and 
every vine that clambers on its surface, 
seems to clasp it in the arms of love. 
Nothing breaks the silence but the sighing 



STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 213 

of the wind in the great yew-tree at the 
church door, — beneath which was the poet's 
favourite seat, and where the brown needles, 
falling, through many an autumn, have made 
a dense carpet on tlie turf. Now and then 
there is a faint rustle in the ivy ; a fitful 
bird-note serves but to deepen the stillness ; 
and from a rose-tree near at hand a few 
leaves flutter down, in soundless benedic- 
tion on the dust beneath. 

Gray was laid in the same grave with his 
mother, " the careful, tender mother of 
many children, one alone of whom," as he 
wrote upon her gravestone, "had the mis- 
fortune to survive her," Their tomb — a 
low, oblong, brick structure, covered with 
a large slab — stands a few feet away from 
the church wall, upon which is a small 
tablet to denote its place. The poet's name 
has not been inscribed above him. There was 
no need here of "storied urn or animated 
bust." The place is his monument, and the 
majestic Elegy — giving to the soul of the 
place a form of seraphic beauty and a voice 
of celestial music — is his immortal epitaph. 

" Here scattered oft, the earliest of the year, 
By hands unseen are showers of violets found ; 

The redbreast loves to build and warble here, 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground." 



214 STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 

There is a monument to Gray in Stoke 
Park, about two hundred yards from the 
church ; but it seems commemorative of the 
builder rather than the poet. They intend 
to set a memorial window in the church, to 
honour him, and the visitor finds there a 
money-box for the reception of contribu- 
tions in aid of this pious design. Nothing 
will be done amiss that serves to direct 
closer attention to his life. It was one of 
the best lives ever recorded in the history 
of literature. It was a life singularly pure, 
noble, and beautiful. In two qualities, sin- 
cerity and reticence, it was exemplary 
almost beyond a parallel; and those are 
qualities which literary character in the 
present day has great need to acquire. 
Gray was averse to publicity. He did not 
sway by the censure of other men ; neither 
did he need their admiration as his breath 
of life. Poetry, to him, was a great art ; 
and he added nothing to literature until he 
had first made it as nearly perfect as it 
could be made by the thoughtful, laborious 
exertion of his best powers, superadded to 
the spontaneous impulse and flow of his 
genius. More voluminous writers, Charles 
Dickens among the rest, have sneered at 
him because he wrote so little. The most 



STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 2l5 

colossal form of human complacency is 
that of the individual who thinks all other 
creatures inferior who happen to be unlike 
himself. This reticence on the part of Gray 
was, in fact, the grand emblem of his sin- 
cerity and the corner-stone of his imperish- 
able renown. There is a better thing than 
the great man who is always speaking ; and 
that is the great man who only speaks when 
he has a great word to say. Gray has left 
only a few poems ; but, of his principal 
works, each is perfect in its kind, supreme 
and unapproachable. He did not test merit 
by reference to ill-formed and caj)ricious 
public opinion, but he wrought according 
to the highest standards of art that learning 
and taste could furnish. His Letters form 
an English classic. There is no better prose 
in existence ; there is not much that is so 
good. But the crowning glory of Gray's 
nature, the element that makes it so im- 
pressive, the charm that brings the pil- 
grim to Stoke-Pogis Church to muse upon 
it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely 
exaltation of its contemplative spirit. He 
was a man whose conduct of life would, 
first of all, purify, extend, and adorn the 
temple of his own soul, out of which should 
afterward flow, in their own free way, those 



2l6 STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 

choral harmonies that soothe, guide, and 
exalt the human race. He lived before he 
wrote. The soul of the Elegy is the soul 
of the man. It was his thought — which he 
has somewhere expressed in better words 
than these — that human beings are only at 
their best while such feelings endure as are 
engendered when death has just taken from 
us the objects of our love. That was the 
point of view from which he habitually 
looked upon the world ; and no man who 
has learned the lessons of experience can 
doubt that he was right. 

Gray was twenty-six years old ^hen he 
wrote the first draft of the Elegy. He be- 
gan this poem in 1742, at Stoke-Pogis, and 
he finished and published it in 1750. No 
visitor to this churchyard can miss either 
its inspiration or its imagery. The poet has 
been dead more than a hundred years, but 
the scene of his rambles and reveries has 
suffered no material change. One of his 
yew-trees, indeed, much weakened with 
age, was some time since blown down in a 
storm, and its fragments have been carried 
away. A picturesque house contiguous to 
the churchyard, which in Queen Elizabeth's 
time was a palace, and was visited by that 
sovereign, and which Gray knew as a manor. 



STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 217 

has now become a dairy. All the trees of 
the region have, of course, waxed and ex- 
panded, — not forgetting the neighbouring 
beeches of Burnham, among which he loved 
to wander, and where he might often have 
been found, sitting with his book, at some 
gnarled wreath of "old fantastic roots." 
But, in all its general characteristics, its 
rustic homeliness and peaceful beauty, this 
"glimmering landscape," immortalised in 
his verse, is the same on which his living 
eyes have looked. There was no need to 
seek for him in any special spot. The house 
in M'hich he once lived might, no doubt, 
be discovered ; but every nook and vista, 
every green lane and upland lawn and ivy- 
mantled tower of this delicious solitude is 
haunted with his presence. 

The night is coming on and the picture 
will soon be dark ; but never while memory 
lasts can it fade out of the heart. What a 
blessing would be ours, if only we could 
hold for ever that exaltation of the spirit, 
that sweet, resigned serenity, that pure 
freedom from all the passions of nature and 
all the cares of life, which comes upon us in 
such a place as this ! Alas, and again alas ! 
Even with the thought this golden mood 
begins to melt away ; even with the thought 



2l8 STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. 

comes our dismissal from its influence. Nor 
will it avail us anything now to linger at the 
shrine. Fortunate is he, though in bereave- 
ment and regret, who parts from beauty 
while yet her kiss is warm upon his lijis, — 
waiting not for the last farewell word, hear- 
ing not the last notes of the music, seeing 
not the last gleams of sunset as the light 
dies from the sky. It was a sad parting, but 
the memory of the place can never now be 
despoiled of its loveliness. As I write these 
words I stand again in the cool and dusky 
silence of the poet's church, with its air of 
stately age and its fragrance of cleanliness, 
while the light of the western sun, broken 
into rays of gold and ruby, streams through 
the painted windows, and softly falls upon 
the quaint little galleries and decorous 
pews ; and, looking forth through the low, 
arched door, I see the dark and melancholy 
boughs of the dreaming yew-tree, and, 
nearer, a shadow of rippling leaves in the 
clear sunshine of the churchway path. And 
all the time a quiet voice is whispering, in 
the chambers of thought — 

" No farther seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
(There they alike in trembling hope repose). 
The bosom of his Father and his God." 



AT THE GRAVE OF COLEEIDGE. 219 



XVIII. 

AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 

AMONG the many deep-thoughted, melo- 
dious and eloquent poems of Words- 
worth there is one — about the burial of 
Ossian — which glances at the question of 
fitness in a place of sepulture. Not always, 
for the illustrious dead, has the final couch 
of rest been rightly chosen. We think with 
resignation, and with a kind of pride, of 
Keats and Shelley in the little Protestant 
burial-ground at Rome. Every heart is 
touched at tlie spectacle of Garrick and 
Johnson sleeping side by side in West- 
minster Abbey. It was right that the 
dust of Dean Stanley should mingle with 
the dust of poets and of kings ; and to see 
— as the present writer did, only a little 
while ago — fresh flowers on the stone that 
covers him, in the chapel of Henry the 
Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and 
solemn content. Shakespeare's grave, in the 
chancel of Stratford Church, awakens the 



220 AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 

same ennobling awe and melancholy plea- 
sure ; and it is with kindred feelings that 
you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who 
can be content that poor Letitia Landon 
should sleep beneath the pavement of a 
barrack, with soldiers trampling over her 
dust ? One might almost think, sometimes, 
that the spirit of calamity, which follows 
certain persons throughout the whole of 
life, had pursued them even in death, to 
haunt about their repose and to mar all the 
gentleness of association that ought to hallow 
it. Chatterton, a pauper and a suicide, was 
huddled into a workhouse graveyard, the 
very place of which — in Shoe Lane, covered 
now by Farringdon Market — has disap- 
peared. Otway, miserable in his love for 
Elizabeth Barry, the actress, and said to 
have starved to death in the Minories, near 
the Tower of London, was laid in a vault of 
St. Clement Danes in the middle of the 
Strand, where never the green leaves rustle, 
but where the roar of the mighty city pours 
on in continual tumult. This church holds 
also the remains of William Mountfort, the 
actor, slain in a brawl by Lord Mohun ; of 
Kat Lee, "the mad poet;" of George 
Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant and de- 
plorable memory ; and of the handsome 



AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 221 

Hildebrand Horden, cut off by a violent 
death in the very spring-time of his youth. 
Hildebrand Horden was the son of a clergy- 
man of Twickenham, and lived in the reign 
of William and Mary. Dramatic chronicles 
say that he was possessed of great talents as 
an actor, and of remarkable personal beauty. 
He was stabbed, in a quarrel, at the Rose 
Tavern ; and after he had been laid out 
for the grave, such was the lively feminine 
interest in his handsome person, many ladies 
came, some masked and others openly, to 
view him in his shroud. This is mentioned in 
Colley Gibber's Ai^ology. Charles Coffey, the 
dramatist, author of The Devil tqwji Two 
Sticks, and other plays, lies in the vaults 
of St. Clement ; as likewise does Thomas 
Rymer, historiographer for William iii., 
successor to Shadwell, and author of Foederay 
in seventeen volumes. In the church of St. 
Clement you may see the pew in which Dr. 
Johnson habitually sat when he attended 
divine service there. It was his favourite 
church. The pew is in the gallery ; and to 
those who honour the passionate integrity 
and fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart old 
champion of letters, it is indeed a sacred 
shrine. Henry Mossop, one of the stateliest 
of stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, 



222 AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 

of penury and grief, — which he bore in 
utter silence, — found a refuge, at last, in 
the barren gloom of Chelsea churchyard. 
Theodore Hook, the cheeriest spirit of his 
time, the man who filled every hour of life 
with the sunshine of his wit, and was wasted 
and degraded by his own brilliancy, rests, 
close by Bishop Sherlock, in Fulham church- 
yard, — one of the dreariest spots in the 
suburbs of London. Perhaps it does not 
much signify, when once the play is over, 
in what oblivion our crumbling relics are 
hidden away. Yet to most human crea- 
tures these are sacred things, and many a 
loving heart, for all time to come, will 
choose a consecrated spot for the repose of 
the dead, and will echo the tender words of 
Longfellow, — so truly expressive of a uni- 
versal and reverent sentiment — 

" Take tliem, Grave, and let them lie 
Folded upon thy narrow shelves. 
As garments by the soul laid by 
And precious only to ourselves." 

One of the pleasantest and saddest of the 
literary pilgrimages that I have made was 
that which brought me to the house in 
which Coleridge died, and the place where 
he Avas buried. The student needs not to 



AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 223 

be told that this poet, born in 1772, the 
year after Gray's death, bore the white 
lilies of pure literature till 1834, when he 
too entered into his rest. The last nineteen 
years of the life of Coleridge were spent in 
a house at Highgate ; and here, within a few 
steps of each other, the visitor may behold 
his dwelling and his tomb. The house is 
one in a block of dwellings, situated in 
what is called The Grove — a broad and 
embowered street, a little way off from the 
centre of the village. There are gardens 
attached to these houses, both in the front 
and the rear, and the smooth and peaceful 
roadside walks in The Grove itself are 
pleasantly shaded by elms of noble size 
and abundant foliage. These were young 
trees when Coleridge saw them, and all this 
neighbourhood, in his day, was but thinly 
settled. Looking from his chamber window 
he could see the dusky outlines of sombre 
London, crowned with the dome of St. Paul's 
on the southern horizon, while, more near, 
across a fertile and smiling valley, the grey 
spire of Hampstead Church would bound 
his prospect, rising above the verdant wood- 
land of Caen.i In front were beds of flowers, 

1 " Come in the first stage, so as either to walk or 
to be di'iven in Mr. Gilmau's gig, to Caen wood and its 



224 AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 

and all around he might hear the songs of 
birds that filled the fragrant air with their 
happy, careless music. Not far away stood 
the old church of Highgate, long since de- 
stroyed, in which he used to worship, and 
close by was the Gate House Inn, primitive, 
quaint, and cosy, which still is standing to 
comfort the weary traveller with its whole- 
some hospitality. Highgate, with all its 
rural peace, must have been a bustling place 
in tlie old times, for all the travel went 
through it that passed either into or out 
of London by the great north road, — that 
road in which Whittington heard the pro- 
phetic summons of the bells, and where 
may still be seen, suitably and rightly 
marked, the site of the stone on which he 
sat to rest. Here, indeed, the coaches used 
to halt, either to bait or to change horses, 
and here the many neglected little taverns 
still remaining, with their odd names and 
their swinging signs, testify to the discarded 
customs of a bygone age. Some years ago 
a new road was cut, so that travellei's might 
wind around the hill, and avoid climbing 



delicious groves and alleys, the finest in England, a 
grand cathedral aisle of giant lime-trees, Pope's 
favourite composition walk, wheu with the old Earl." 
—Coleridge to Crabb Robinson. Highgate, June 1817. 



AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 225 

the steep ascent to the village ; and since 
then the grass has begun to grow in the 
streets. But such bustle as once enlivened 
the solitude of Highgate could never have 
been otherwise than agreeable diversion to 
its inhabitants ; while for Coleridge himself, 
as we can well imagine, the London coach 
was welcome indeed, that brought to his 
door such well -loved friends as Charles 
Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb Robin- 
son, Wordsworth, or Talfourd. 

To this retreat the author of " The 
Ancient Mariner" withdrew in 1815, to 
live with his friend James Oilman, a sur- 
geon, who had undertaken to rescue him 
from the demon of opium, but who, as De 
Quincey intimates, was lured by the poet 
into the service of the very fiend whom 
both had striven to subdue. It was his 
last refuge, and he never left it till he was 
released from life. As you ramble in this 
quiet neighbourhood, your fancy will not 
fail to conjure up his placid figure, — the 
silver hair, the pale face, the great, lumin- 
ous, changeful blue eyes, the somewhat 
portly form clothed in black raiment, the 
slow, feeble walk, the sweet, benignant 
manner, the voice that was perfect melody, 
and the inexhaustible talk that was the flow 

S.E. p 



226 AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 

of a golden sea of eloquence and wisdom. 
Coleridge was often seen walking here, with 
a book in his hand ; and the children of 
the village knew him and loved him. His 
presence is impressed for ever tipon this 
place, to haunt and to hallow it. He was a 
very great man. The wings of his imagina- 
tion wave easily in the opal air of the high- 
est heaven. The power and majesty of his 
thought are such as establish for ever in 
the human mind the conviction of personal 
immortality. Yet how forlorn the ending 
that this stately soul was enforced to 
make ! For more than thirty years he was 
the slave of opium. It broke up his home ; 
it alienated his wife ; it ruined his health ; 
it made him utterly wretched. " I have 
been, through a large portion of my later 
life," he wrote in 1834, "a sufferer, sorely 
afflicted with bodily pains, languor, and 
manifold infirmities." But back of all this, 
— more dreadful still and harder to bear, — 
was he not the slave of some ingrained 
perversity of the mind itself, some helpless 
and hopeless irresolution of character, some 
enervating spell of that sublime yet pitiable 
dejection of Hamlet, Mhich kept him for 
ever at war with himself, and, last of all, 
cast him out upon the homeless ocean of 



AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. 22/ 

despair, to drift away into ruin and death ? 
There are shapes more awful than his, in 
the records of literary history, — the ravaged, 
agonising form of Swift, for instance, and 
the wonderful, desolate face of Byron ; but 
there is no figure more forloi-n and pathetic. 
This way the memory of Coleridge came 
upon me, standing at his grave. He should 
have been laid in some wild, free place, 
where the grass could grow above him and 
the trees could wave their branches over 
his head. They placed him in a ponderous 
tomb, of grey stone, in Highgate Church- 
yard, and, in later times, they have reared 
a new building above it, — the grammar- 
school of the village, — so that now the 
tomb, fenced round with iron, is in a cold, 
barren, gloomy crypt, accessible, indeed, 
from the churchyard, through several arches, 
but grim and doleful in all its surroundings ; 
as if the evil and cruel fate that marred his 
life were still triumphant over his ashes. 



228 ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 



XIX. 

ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 

IN England, as elsewhere, every historic 
spot is occupied ; and of course it some- 
times happens, at such a spot, that its asso- 
ciation is marred and its sentiment almost 
destroyed by the presence of the persons 
and the interests of to-day. The visitor to 
such places must carry with him not only 
knowledge and sensibility but imagination 
and patience. He will not find the way strewn 
with roses nor the atmosphere of poetry ready- 
made for his enjoyment. That atmosphere, 
indeed, for the most part — especially in the 
cities — he must himself supply. Relics do 
not robe themselves for exhibition. The 
Past is utterly indifferent to its worshippers. 
All manner of little obstacles, too, will arise 
before the pilgrim, to thwart him in his 
search. • The mental strain and bewilder- 
ment, the inevitable physical weariness, the 
soporific influence of the climate, the tumult 
of the streets, the frequent and dishearten- 



ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 229 

ing spectacle of poverty, squalor, and vice, 
the capricious and untimely rain, the incon- 
venience of long distances, the ill-timed 
arrival and consequent disappointment, the 
occasional nervous sense of loneliness and 
insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the igno- 
rant, garrulous porter, the extortionate cab- 
man, and the jeering bystander — all these 
must be regarded with resolute indifference 
by him who would ramble, pleasantly and 
profitably, in the footprints of English his- 
tory. Everything depends, in other words, 
upon the eyes with which you observe and 
the spirit which you impart. Never was a 
keener truth uttered than in the couplet of 
Wordsworth — 

'' Minds that have nothing to confei 
Find little to perceive." 

To the philosophic stranger, however, even 
this prosaic occupancy of historic places is 
not without its pleasurable, because humor- 
ous, significance. Such an observer in 
England will sometimes be amused as well 
as impressed by a sudden sense of the singu- 
lar incidental position into which — partly 
through the lapse of years, and partly 
through a peculiarity of national character — 
the scenes of famous events, not to say the 



230 ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 

events themselves, have gradually drifted. 
I thought of this one night, when, in 
Whitehall Gardens, I was looking at the 
statue of James the Second, — which there 
marks the place of the execution of his 
father, Charles the First, — and a courteous 
policeman came up and silently turned the 
light of his bull's-eye upon the inscription. 
A scene of more incongruous elements, or 
one suggestive of a more serio-comic con- 
trast, could not be imagined. I thought of 
it again when standing on the village green 
near Barnet, and viewing, amid surround- 
ings both pastoral and ludicrous, the column 
which there commemorates the defeat and 
death of the great Earl of Warwick, and, 
consequently, the final triumph of the Crown 
over the last of the Barons of England. 

It was toward the close of a cool summer 
day, and of a long drive through the beau- 
tiful hedgerows of sweet and verdurous 
Middlesex, that I came to the villages of 
Barnet and Hadley, and went over the field 
of King Edward's victory, — that fatal, glori- 
ous field, on which Gloster showed such 
resolute valour, and where Neville, supreme 
and magnificent in disaster, fought on foot, 
to make sure that himself might go down in 
the stormy death of all his hopes. More 



ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 23 1 

than four hundred years have drifted by 
since that misty April morning when the 
star of Warwick was quenched in blood, 
and ten thousand men were slaughtered to 
end the strife between the Barons and the 
Crown ; yet the results of that conflict are 
living facts in the government of England 
now, and in the fortunes of her inhabitants. 
If you were unaware of the solid simplicity 
and proud reticence of the English char- 
acter, — leading it to merge all its shining 
deeds in one continuous fabric of achieve- 
ment, like jewels set in a cloth of gold, — 
you might expect to find this spot adorned 
with a structure of more than common 
splendour. What you actually do find 
there is a plain monolith, standing in the 
middle of a common, at the junction of 
several roads, — the chief of which are those 
leading to Hatfield and St. Albans, in Hert- 
fordshire, — and on one side of this column 
you may read, in letters of faded black, the 
comprehensive statement that " Here was 
fought the famous battle between Edwai'd 
the Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 
14th, anno 1471, in which the Earl was de- 
feated and slain."* 

1 The words "stick no bills" have been added, just 
below this inscription, with ludicrous effect. 



232 ox BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 

In my reverie, standing at the foot of 
this humble, weather-stained monument, I 
saw the long range of Barnet Hills, mantled 
with grass and flowers, and with the golden 
haze of a morning in spring, swarming 
with gorgeous horsemen and glittering with 
spears and banners ; and I heard the venge- 
ful clash of arms, the horrible neighing of 
maddened steeds, the furious shouts of on- 
set, and all the nameless cries and groans of 
battle, commingled in a thrilling yet hideous 
din. Here rode King Edward, intrepid, 
handsome, and stalwart, with his proud, 
cruel smile and his long yellow hair. There 
Warwick swung his great two-handed sword, 
and mowed his foes like grain. And there 
the fiery form of Richard, splendid in bur- 
nished steel, darted like the scorpion, deal- 
ing death at every blow ; till at last, in 
fatal mischance, the sad star of Oxford, 
assailed by its own friends, was swept out 
of the field, and the fight drove, raging, 
into the valleys of Hadley. How strangely, 
though, did this fancied picture conti'ast 
with the actual scene before me ! At a little 
distance, all around the village green, the 
peaceful, embowered cottages kept their 
sentinel watch. Over the careless, strag- 
gling grass went the shadow of the passing 



ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. 233 

clouds. Not a sound was heard, save the 
rustle of leaves and the low laughter of 
some little children, playing near the monu- 
ment. Close by, and at rest, was a flock of 
geese, couched upon the cool earth, and, as 
their custom is, supremely contented with 
themselves and all the world. And at the 
very foot of the column, stretched out at 
his full length, in tattered garments that 
scarcely covered his nakedness, reposed the 
British labourer, fast asleep upon the sod. 
No more Wars of the Roses now ; but calm 
retirement, smiling plenty, cool western 
winds, and sleep and peace — 

" "With a red rose and a white rose 
Leaniiisc, noddin.sr at the wall." 



234 A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 



XX. 

A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 

ONE of the most impressive spots on 
earth, and one that especially teaches 
— with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn 
admonition — the great lesson of contrast, 
the incessant flow of the ages and the in- 
evitable decay and oblivion of the past, is 
the ancient city of Canterbury. Years and 
not merely days of residence here are essen- 
tial to the adequate and right comprehension 
of this wonderful place. Yet even an hour 
passed among its shrines will teach you, 
as no printed word has ever taught, the 
measureless power and the sublime beauty 
of a perfect religious faith ; while, as you 
stand and meditate in the shadow of the 
grey Cathedral walls, the pageant of a 
thousand years of history will pass before 
you like a dream. The city itself, with its 
bright, swift river (the Stour), its opulence 
of trees and flowers, its narrow, winding 
streets, its numerous antique buildings, its 



A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 235 

many towers, its fragments of ancient wall 
and gate, its formal decorations, its air of 
perfect cleanliness and thoughtful gravity, 
its beautiful, umbrageous suburbs, — where 
the scarlet of the poppies and the russet 
red of the clover make one vast rolling sea 
of colour and of fragrant delight. — and, to 
crown all, its stately character of wealth 
without ostentation and industry without 
tumult, must prove to you a deep and satis- 
fying comfort. But, through all this, per- 
vading and surmounting it all, the spirit 
of the place pours in upon your heart, and 
floods your whole being with the incense 
and organ music of passionate, jubilant 
devotion. 

It was not superstition that reared those 
gorgeous fanes of worship which still adorn, 
even while they no longer consecrate, the 
ecclesiastic cities of the old world. In the 
age of Augustine, Dunstan, and Ethelnoth 
humanity had begun to feel its profound 
and vital need of a sure and settled reliance 
on religious faith. The drifting spirit, worn 
with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, longed 
to be at peace — longed for a refuge equally 
from the evils and tortures of its own 
condition and the storms and perils of the 
world. In that longing it recognised its 



236 A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 

immortality and heard the voice of its 
Divine Parent ; and out of the ecstatic joy 
and utter abandonment of its new-born, 
passionate, responsive faith, it built and 
consecrated those stupendous temples, — 
rearing them with all its love, no less than 
all its riches and all its power. There was 
no wealth that it would not give, no toil 
that it would not perform, and no sacrifice 
that it would not make, in the accomplish- 
ment of its sacred task. It was grandly, 
nobly, terribly in earnest, and it achieved 
a work that is not only sublime in its poetic 
majesty, but measureless in the scope and 
extent of its moral and spiritual influence. 
It has left to succeeding ages not only 
a legacy of permanent beauty, not only a 
sublime symbol of religious faith, but an 
everlasting monument to the loveliness and 
greatness that are inherent in human nature. 
No creature with a human heart in his bosom 
can stand in such a building as Canterbury 
Cathedral without feeling a greater love and 
reverence than he ever felt before, alike for 
God and man. 

On a day this year (July 27th, 1882), 
when a class of the boys of the King's 
School of Canterbury was graduated, the 
present writer chanced to be a listener to 



A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 237 

the impressive and touching sermon that 
was preached before them, in the chancel 
of the Cathedral ; wherein they were ten- 
derly admonished to keep unbroken their 
associations with their school-days, and to 
remember the lessons of the place itself. 
This counsel must have sunk deep into 
every mind. It is difficult to uriderstand 
how any person reared amid such scenes 
and relics could ever cast away their hal- 
lowing influence. Even to the casual visitor 
the bare thought of the historic treasures 
that are garnered in this temple is, by itself, 
sufficient to implant in the bosom a memor- 
able and lasting awe. For more than 
twelve hundred years the succession of the 
Archbishops of Canterbury has remained 
substantially unbroken. There have been 
ninety-three "primates of all England," of 
whom fifty-three were buried in the Cathe- 
dral, and here the tombs of fifteen of them 
are still visible. Here was buried the saga- 
cious, crafty, inflexible, indomitable Henry 
the Fourth, — that Hereford whom Shake- 
speare has described and interpreted with 
matchless, immortal eloquence, — and here, 
cut off in the morning of his greatness, and 
lamented to this day in the hearts of the 
English people, was laid the body of Edward 



238 A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 

the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour 
and terrible prowess in war added a high- 
souled, humane, and tender magnanimity 
in conquest, and whom personal virtues and 
shining public deeds united to make the 
ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way 
than by personal observance of such memo- 
rials can historic reading be invested with a 
perfect and permanent reality. Over the 
tomb of the Black Prince, with its fine re- 
cumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang the 
gauntlets that he wore ; and they tell you 
that his sword formerly hung there, but that 
Oliver Cromwell, — who revealed his icono- 
clastic and unlovely character in making a 
stable of this Cathedral, — carried it away. 
Close at hand is the tomb of the wise, just, 
and gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed 
" Blessed are the dead which die in the 
Lord J " and you may touch a little, low 
mausoleum of grey stone, in which are the 
ashes of John Morton, that Bishop of Ely 
from whose garden in Holborn the straw- 
berries were brought for the Duke of Gloster, 
on the day when he slaughtered the accom- 
plished Hastings, and who "lied to Bicli- 
mond," in good time, from the standard of 
the grisly and dangerous Protector. Stand- 
ing there, I could almost hear the resolute, 



A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 239 

scornful voice of Richard, breathing out, in 
clear, implacable accents — 
" Morton with Richmond touches me more near 
Than Buckingham and his rash- levied num- 
bers." 

The astute Morton, when Bosworth was 
over, and Richmond had assumed the crown 
and Bourchier had died, was made Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury ; and as such, at a 
great age, he passed away. A few hundred 
yards from his place of rest, in a vault be- 
neath the Church of St. Dunstan, is the head 
of Sir Thomas More (the body being in St. 
Peter's, at the Tower of London), who, in 
his youth, had been a member of Morton's 
ecclesiastical household, and whose great- 
ness that prelate had foreseen and pro- 
phesied. Did no shadow of the scaffold 
ever fall across the statesman's thoughts, 
as he looked upon that handsome, manly 
boy, and thought of the troublous times 
that were raging about them ? Morton, 
aged ninety, died in 1500 ; More, aged fifty- 
five, in 1535. Strange fate, indeed, was that, 
and as inscrutable as mournful, which gave 
to those who in life had been like father ai?d 
son such a ghastly association in death ! ^ 

1 St. Dunstan's Church was connected with the 
Convent of St. Gregory. The Roper family, in the 



240 A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 

They show you, of course, the place where 
Becket was murdered, and the stone steps, 
worn hollow by the thousands upon thou- 
sands of devout pilgrims who, in the days 
before the Reformation, crept up to weep 
and pray at the costly, resplendent shrine of 
St. Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all the 
world knows, were, by command of Henry the 
Eighth, burnt, and scattered to the winds, 
while his shrine was pillaged and destroyed. 
Neither tomb nor scutcheon commemorates 
him here, — but the Cathedral itself is his 
monument. There it stands, with its grand 
columns and glorious arches, its towers of 
enormous size and its long vistas of distance 
so mysterious and awful, its gloomy crypt 
where once the silver lamps sparkled and 
the smoking censers were swung, its tombs 
of mighty warriors and statesmen, its frayed 

time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel in it, in 
■which are two marble tombs, commemorative of 
them, and underneath which is their burial vault. 
Malgaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's daughter, ob- 
tained her father's head, after his execution, and 
buried it here. The vault was opened in 1S35, — when 
a new pavement was laid in the chancel of this 
ciiurch, — and persons descending into it saw the 
head, in a leaden box shaped like a beehive, open 
in front, set in a niche in the wall, behind an iron 
grill. 



A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. 24 1 

and crambling bcanners, and the eternal, 
majestic silence with which it broods over 
the love, ambition, glory, defeat, and anguish 
of a thousand years, dissolved now and ended 
in a little dust ! As the organ music died 
away I looked upward and saw where a 
bird was wildly flying to and fro through 
the vast spaces beneath its lofty roof, in the 
vain efi"ort to find some outlet of escape. 
Fit emblem, truly, of the human mind 
which strives to comprehend and to utter 
the meaning of this marvellous fabric ! 



242 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 



XXI. 

THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

18S2. 

"VriGHT, ill Stratford-on-Avon — a summer 
IM night, with large, solemn stars, a cool 
and fragrant breeze, and the stillness of per- 
fect rest. From this high and grassy bank 
I look forth across the darkened meadows 
and the smooth and shining river, and see 
the little town where it lies asleep. Hardly 
a light is anywhere visible, A few great 
elms, near by, are nodding and rustling in 
the wind, and once or twice a drowsy bird- 
note floats up from the neighbouring thicket 
that skirts the vacant, lonely road. There, 
at some distance, are the dim arches of 
Clopton's Bridge. In front — a graceful, 
shapely mass, indistinct in the starlight — 
rises the fair Memorial, Stratford's honour 
and pride. Further off, glimmering through 
the tree-tops, is the dusky spire of Trinity, 
keeping its sacred vigil over the dust of 
Shakespeare. Nothing here is changed. 
The same tranquil beauty, as of old, hallows 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 243 

this place ; the same sense of awe and mys- 
tery broods over its silent shrines of ever- 
lasting renown. Long and weary the years 
have been since last I saw it ; but to-night 
they are remembered only as a fleeting and 
troubled dream. Here, once more, is the 
highest and noblest companionship this 
world can give. Here, once more, is the 
almost visible presence of the one magician 
who can lift the soul out of the infinite 
weariness of common things, and give it 
strength and peace. The old time has come 
back, and the bloom of the heart that I 
thought had all faded and gone. I stroll 
again to the river's brink, and take my place 
in the boat, and, ti'ailing my hand in the 
dark waters of Avon, forget every trouble 
that ever I have known. 

It is often said, with reference to memor- 
able places, that the best view always is the 
first view. No doubt the accustomed eye 
sees blemishes. No doubt the supreme 
moments of human life are few, and come 
but once ; and neither of them is ever re- 
peated. Yet frequently it will be found 
that the change is in ourselves and not in 
the objects we behold. Scott has glanced at 
this truth, in a few mournful lines, written 
toward the close of his heroic and beautiful 



244 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

life. Here at Stratford, however, I am not 
conscious that the wonderful charm of the 
place is in any degree impaired. The town 
still preserves its old-fashioned air, its 
quaintness, its perfect cleanliness and order. 
At the Shakespeare cottage, in the stillness 
of the room where he was born, the spirits 
of mystery and reverence still keep their 
imperial state. At the ancient grammar- 
school, with its pent-house roof and its dark 
sagging rafters, you still may see, in fancy, 
the unwilling schoolboy gazing upward ab- 
sently at the great, rugged timbers, or look- 
ing wistfully at the sunshine, where it 
streams through the little lattice windows 
of his prison. New Place, with its lovely 
lawn, its spacious gardens, the ancestral 
mulberry and the ivy-covered well, will 
bring the poet before you, as he lived and 
moved in the meridian of his greatness. 
Cymheline, The Tempest and A Winter^s 
Tale, the last of his works, undoubtedly 
were written here ; and this alone should 
make it a hallowed spot. Here he blessed 
his young daughter on her wedding day ; 
here his eyes closed in the last long sleep ; 
and from this place he was carried to his 
grave in the chancel of Stratford Church. 
I pass once again through the fragrant 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 245 

avenue of limes, the silent churchyard with 
its crumbling monuments, the dim porch, 
the twilight of the venerable temple, and 
kneel at last above the ashes of Shakespeare. 
AVhat majesty in this triumphant rest ! 
All the great labour accomplished. The 
universal human heart interpreted with a 
living voice. The memory and the imagina- 
tion of mankind stored for ever with words 
of sublime eloquence and images of immor- 
tal beauty. The noble lesson of self-con- 
quest — the lesson of the entire adequacy of 
the resolute, virtuous, patient human will — 
set forth so grandly that all the world must 
see its meaning and marvel at its splendour. 
And, last of all, death itself shorn of its 
terrors and made a trivial thing. 

There is a new custodian at New Place, 
and he will show you the little museum 
that is kept there — including the shovel- 
board from the old Falcon tavern across the 
way, on which the poet himself might have 
played — and he will lead you through the 
gardens, and descant on the mulberry and 
on the ancient and still unforgiven vandal- 
ism of the Rev. Francis Gastrell, by whom 
the Shakespeare mansion was destroyed 
(1757), and will pause at the well, and at 
the fragments of the foundation, covered 



246 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

now with stout screens of wire gauze. There 
is a fresh and fragrant beauty all about 
these grounds, an atmosphere of sunshine, 
life, comfort and elegance of state, that no 
observer can miss. This same keeper also 
has the keys of the Guild Chapel, opposite, 
on which Shakespeare looked from his win- 
dows and his garden, and in which he was 
the holder of two sittings. You will enter 
it by the same porch through which he 
walked, and see the arch and columns and 
tall, transomed windows on w^hich his gaze 
has often rested. The interior is cold and 
barren now, for the scriptural wall-paint- 
ings, discovered here in 1S04, under thick 
coatings of whitewash, have been removed 
or have faded, and the wooden pews, which 
apparently are modern, have not yet been 
embrowned by age. Yet this church, known 
beyond question as one of Shakespeare's per- 
sonal haunts, will hold you with the strong- 
est tie of reverence and sympathy. At his 
birthplace everything remains unchanged. 
The gentle ladies who have so long guarded 
and shown it still have it in their affection- 
ate care. The ceiling of the room in which 
the poet was born — that room which con- 
tains "the Actors' Pillar" and the thou- 
sands of signatures on walls and windows — 



THE SHEINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 247 

is slowly crumbling to pieces. Every morn- 
ing many little particles of the plaster are 
found upon the floor. The area of tiny, 
delicate laths, to sustain this ceiling, has 
more than doubled since I last saw it, five 
years ago. It was on the ceiling that Lord 
Byron wrote his name, but this has flaked 
off and disappeared. In the museum hall, 
once the Swan Inn, they are forming a 
library ; and here, among many objects of 
dubious value, you may see at least one 
Shakespearean relic of extraordinary inte- 
rest. This is the MS. letter of Richard 
Quiney — whose son became in 1616 the hus- 
band of Shakespeare's youngest daughter, 
Judith— asking the poet for the loan of 
thirty pounds. It is enclosed between 
plates of glass in a frame, and usually kept 
covered with a cloth, so that the sunlight 
may not fade the ink ; and the window op- 
posite to which it is placed, at right angles 
to the casement, is protected by a gauze of 
wire from danger of the accidental missile. 
The date of this letter is October 25, 1598, 
and thirty English pounds then was a sum 
equivalent to about six hundred dollars of 
American money now. This is the only 
letter known to be in existence that Shake- 
speare received. The elder of the ladies 



248 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

who keep this house will recite to you its 
text from memory — giving a delicious old- 
fashioned flavour to its quaint phraseology 
and fervent spirit, as rich and strange as the 
odour of the wild thyme and rosemary that 
grow in her garden beds. This antique 
touch adds a wonderful charm to the relics 
of the past. I found it once more when sit- 
ting in the chimney-corner of Anne Hatha 
way's kitchen ; and again in the lovely little 
church at Charlcote, where a simple, kindly 
woman, not ashamed to reverence the place 
and the dead, stood with me at the tomb of 
the Lucys, and repeated from memory the 
tender, sincere, and eloquent epitaph with 
which Sir Thomas Lucy thereon commemo- 
rates his wife. The lettering is small and 
indistinct on the tomb, but, having often 
read it, I well knew how correctly it was 
then spoken. Nor shall I ever read it again 
without thinking of that kindly, pleasant 
voice, the hush of the beautiful church, the 
afternoon sunlight streaming through the 
oriel window, and — visible through the 
doorway arch — the roses waving among the 
churchyard graves. 

In the days of Shakespeare's courtship, 
when he strolled across the fields to Anne 
Hathaway's cottage at Shottery, his path, 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 249 

we may be sure, ran through wild pasture- 
land and tangled thicket. A fourth part 
of England at that time was a wilderness, 
and the entire population of that country 
did not exceed five millions of persons. The 
Stratford-on-Avon of to-day is still possessed 
of many of its ancient features ; but the 
region round about it then must have been 
rude and wild in comparison with what it 
is at present. If you take the footpath to 
Shottery now you will pass between low 
fences and along the margin of gardens, — 
now in the sunshine, and now in the shadow 
of larch and elm, while the sweet air blows 
upon your face and the expeditious rook 
makes rapid wing to the woodland, cawing 
as he flies. In the old cottage, with its 
roof of thatch, its crooked rafters, its odor- 
ous hedges and climbing vines, its leafy 
well and its tangled garden, everything re- 
mains the same. Mrs. JNIary Taylor Baker, 
the last living descendant of the Hathaways, 
born in this house, always a resident here, 
and now an elderly woman, still has it in 
her keeping, and still displays to you the 
ancient carved bedstead in the garret, the 
wooden settle by tlie kitchen fireside, the 
hearth at which Shakespeare sat, the great 
blackened chimney with its adroit iron 



250 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

" fish-back " for the better regulation of 
the tea-kettle, and the brown and tattered 
Bible with the Hathaway family record. 
Sitting in an old arm-chair, in the comer 
of Anne Hathaway's bedroom, I could hear 
in the perfumed summer stillness, the low 
twittering of birds, whose nest is in the 
covering thatch, and whose songs would 
awaken the sleeper at the earliest light of 
dawn. A better idea can be obtained in 
this cottage than in either the birthplace or 
any other Shakespearean haunt of what the 
real life actually was of the common people 
of England in Shakespeare's day. The stone 
floor and oaken timbers of the Hathaway 
kitchen, stained and darkened in the slow 
decay of three hundred years, have lost no 
particle of their pristine character. The 
occupant of the cottage has not been absent 
from it more than a week during upward 
of half a century. In such a nook the in- 
herited habits of living do not alter. " The 
thing that has been is the thing that shall 
be," and the customs of long ago are the 
customs of to-day. 

The Red Horse Inn is in new hands now, 
and seems to be fresher and brighter than of 
old — without, however, having parted with 
either its antique furniture or its delightful 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 25 1 

antique ways. The old mahogany and wax- 
candle period has not ended yet in this 
happy place, and you sink to sleep on a 
snow-white pillow, soft as down and fra- 
grant as lavender. One important change is 
especially to be remarked. They have made 
a niche in the right-hand corner of Washing- 
ton Irving's parlour, and in it have placed 
his arm-chair, recushioned and polished, and 
sequestered from touch by a large sheet of 
plate-glass. The relic may still be seen, but 
the pilgrim can sit upon it no more. Per- 
haps it might be well to enshrine ** Geoffrey 
Crayon's Sceptre " in a somewhat similar 
way. It could be fastened to a shield, dis- 
playing the American colours, and hung up 
in this storied little room. At present it is 
the tenant of a muslin bag, and keeps its 
state in the seclusion of a bureau drawer; 
nor is it shown except upon request — like 
the beautiful marble statue of Donne, in his 
shroud, niched in the chancel wall of St. 
Paul's Cathedral. 

One of the strongest instincts of the Eng- 
lish character is the instinct of permanence. 
It acts involuntarily, it pervades the national 
life, and, as Pope said of the universal soul, 
it operates unspent. Institutions seem to 
have grown out of human nature in this 



252 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

country, and are as much its expression as 
blossoms, leaves, and flowers are the ex- 
pression of inevitable law. A custom, in 
England, once established, is seldom or 
never changed. The brilliant career, the 
memorable achievement, the great char- 
acter, once fulfilled, takes a permanent 
shape in some kind of outward and visible 
memorial, some absolute and palpable fact, 
which thenceforth is an accepted part of the 
history of the land and the experience of its 
people. England means stability — the fire- 
side and the altar, home here and heaven 
hereafter ; and this is the secret of the 
power that she wields in the afifairs of the 
world and the charm that she difi'uses over 
the domain of thought. Such a temple as St. 
Paul's Cathedral, such a palace as Hampton 
Court, such a castle as that of Windsor or 
that of Warwick, is the natural, sponta- 
neous expression of the English instinct of 
permanence ; and it is in memorials like 
these that England has written her history, 
with symbols that can perish only with 
time itself. At intervals her latent animal 
ferocity breaks loose — as it did under Henry 
the Eighth, under Mary, under Cromwell, 
and under James the Second, — and for a 
brief time ramps and bellows, striving to 



THE SHKINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 253 

deface and deform the surrounding struc- 
ture of beauty that has been slowly and 
painfully reared out of her deep heart and 
her sane civilisation. But the tears of 
human pity soon quench the fires of Smith- 
field, and it is only for a little while that 
the Puritan soldiers play at nine-pins in the 
nave of St. Paul's. This fever of animal 
impulse, this wild revolt of petulant impa- 
tience, is soon cooled ; and then the great 
work goes on again, as calmly and surely as 
before — that great work of educating man- 
kind to the level of constitutional liberty, in 
which England has been engaged for well- 
nigh a thousand years, and in which the 
American Republic, though sometimes at 
variance with her methods and her spirit, 
is, nevertheless, her follower and the con- 
sequence of her example. Our Declaration 
was made in 1776 : the Declaration to the 
Prince of Orange is dated 1689, and the Bill 
of Rights in 1628, while Magna Charta was 
secured in 1215. 

Throughout every part of this sumptuous 
and splendid domain of Warwickshire the 
symbols of English stability and the relics 
of historic times are numerous and deeply 
impressive. At Stratford the reverence of 
the nineteenth century takes its practical, 



254 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

substantial form, not alone in the honour, 
able preservation of the ancient Shake- 
spearean shrines, but in the Shakespeare 
Memorial. This noble fabric, though mainly 
due to the fealty of England, is also, to 
some extent, representative of the practical 
sympathy of America. Several Americans 
— Edwin Booth, Herman Vezin, M. D. Con- 
way, and W. H. Reynolds among them — 
are contributors to the fund that built it, 
and an American gentlewoman. Miss Kate 
Field, has worked for its cause with ex- 
cellent zeal, untiring fidelity, and good re- 
sults. [Miss Mary Anderson, the renowned 
American actress, has acted m the Memorial 
Theatre for its benefit, presenting for the 
first time in her life the character of Rosalind, 
(1885).] The work is not yet finished. About 
£2000 will be required to complete the 
tower and suitably decorate the interior. 
But already it is a noble monument. It 
stands upon the margin of the Avon, not a 
great way off from the Church of the Holy 
Trinity, which is Shakespeare's grave ; so 
that these two buildings are the conspicuous 
points of the landscape, and seem to con- 
front each other with sympathetic greeting, 
as if conscious of their sacred trust. The 
vacant land adjacent, extending between 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 255 

the road and the river, is a part of the 
Memorial estate, and is to be converted into 
a garden, with pathways and abundance of 
shade-trees and of flowers, — by means of 
which the prospect will be made still fairer 
than now it is, and will be kept for ever 
unbroken between the Memorial and the 
Church. Under this ample Tudor roof — so 
stately, and yet so meek and quaint — are 
already united a theatre, a library, and a 
hall of pictures. The theatre, as yet, lacks 
requisite ornament. Except for a gay drop- 
curtain, illustrating the processional progress 
of Queen Elizabeth when ' ' going to the 
Globe Theatre," it is barren of colour; 
while its divisions of seats are in conformity 
with the inconvenient arrangements of the 
common London theatre of to-day. Queen 
Elizabeth heard plays in the Hall of the 
Middle Temple, the Hall of Hampton Palace, 
and at Greenwich and Richmond ; but she 
never went to the Globe Theatre. In his- 
toric temples there should be no trifling with 
historic themes ; and surely, in a theatre of 
the nineteenth century, dedicated to Shake- 
speare, while no fantastic regard should be 
paid to the usages of the past, it would be 
tasteful and proper to blend the best of 
ancient ways with all the luxury and ele- 



256 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

gance of these times. It is much, however, 
to have built what can readily be made a 
lovely theatre ; and meanwhile, through the 
affectionate generosity of friends in all parts 
of the world, the library shelves are con- 
tinually gathering treasures, and the hall 
of paintings is growing more and more the 
imposing and beautiful expository that it 
was intended to be of Shakespearean poetry 
and the history of the English stage. Many 
faces of actors appear upon these walls — 
from Garrick to Edmund Kean, from Mac- 
ready to Henry Irving, from Kemble to 
Edwin Booth, from Mrs. Siddons to Miss 
Mary Anderson. Prominent among the pic- 
tures is a spirited portrait of Garrick and 
his wife, playing at cards, wherein the lovely 
laughing lady archly discloses that her hands 
are full of hearts. Not otherwise, truly, is 
it with sweet and gentle Stratford herself, 
where peace and beauty and the most hal- 
lowed and hallowing of poetic associations 
garner up, for ever and for ever, the hearts 
of all mankind. 

In previous papers upon this subject I 
have tried to express the feelings that are 
excited by personal contact with the relics 
of Shakespeare — the objects which he saw 
and the fields through which he wandered. 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 257 

Fancy would never tire of lingering in this 
delicious region of flowers and of dreams. 
From the hideous vileness of the social con- 
dition of London in the time of James the 
First, Shakespeare must indeed have re- 
joiced to depart into this blooming garden 
of rustic tranquillity. Here also he could 
find the surroundings that were needful to 
sustain him amid the vast and overwhelm- 
ing labours of his final period. No man, 
however great his powers, can ever, in this 
world, escape from the trammels under 
which nature enjoins and permits the exer- 
cise of the brain. Ease, in the intellectual 
life, is always visionary. The higher a 
man's faculties, the higher are his ideals, — 
toward which, under the operation of a 
divine law, he must perpetually strive, but 
to the height of which he will never abso- 
lutely attain. So, inevitably, it was with 
Shakespeare. But, although genius cannot 
escape from itself, and is no more free than 
the humblest toiler in the vast scheme of 
creation, it may — and it must — sometimes 
escape from the world : and this wise poet, 
of all men else, would surely recognise and 
strongly grasp the great privilege of solitude 
amidst the sweetest and most soothing ad- 
juncts of natural beauty. That privilege 



258 THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE. 

he founel in the sparkling and fragrant 
gardens of Warwick, the woods and fields 
and waters of Avon, where he had played 
as a boy, and where love had laid its first 
kiss upon his lips, and poetry first opened 
upon his inspired vision the eternal glories 
of her celestial world. It still abides there^ 
for every gentle soul that can feel its influ- 
ence — to deepen the glow of noble passion, 
to soften the sting of grief, and to touch the 
lips of worship with a fresh sacrament of 
patience and beauty. 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 2^q 



XXII. 

A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

" / mus^ become a borrower of the night, 
For a dark hour or twain." — Macbeth. 

MIDNIGHT has just sounded from the 
tower of St. Martin's Church, It is 
a peaceful night, faintly lit with stars, and 
in the region round about Trafalgar Square 
a dream-like stillness broods over the dark- 
ened city, now slowly hushing itself to its 
brief and troubled rest. This is the centre 
of the heart of modern civilisation, the very 
middle of the greatest city in the world — 
the vast, seething alembic of a grand future, 
the stately monument of a deathless past. 
Here, alone, in my quiet room of this old 
English inn, let me meditate a while on some 
of the scenes that are near me — the strange, 
romantic, sad, grand objects that I have 
seen, the memorable figures of beauty, 



26o A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

genius, and renown that haunt this classic 
land. 

How solemn and awful now must be the 
gloom within the walls of the Abbey ! A 
walk of only a few minutes would bring me 
to its gates — the gates of the most renowned 
mausoleum on earth. No human foot to- 
night invades its sacred precincts. The dead 
alone possess it. I see, upon its grey walls, 
the marble figures, white and spectral, star- 
ing through the darkness. I hear the night- 
wind moaning around its lofty towers and 
faintly sobbing in the dim, mysterious spaces 
lieneath its fretted roof. Here and there 
a ray of starlight, streaming through the 
sumptuous rose window, falls and lingers, in 
ruby or emerald gleam, on tomb, or pillar, 
or dusky pavement. Rustling noises, vague 
and fearful, float from those dim chapels 
where the great kings lie in state, with 
marble effigies recumbent above their bones. 
At such an hour as this, in such a place, do 
the dead come out of their graves? The 
resolute, implacable Queen Elizabeth, the 
beautiful, ill-fated Queen of Scots, the two 
royal boys murdered in the Tower, Charles 
the Merry and William the Silent — are 
these, and such as these, among the phan- 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 26 1 

toms that fill the haunted aisles ? AVhat a 
wonderful company it would be, for human 
eyes to behold ! And with what passionate 
love or hatred, what amazement, or what 
haughty scorn, its members would look 
upon each other's faces, in this miraculous 
meeting? Here, through the glimmering, 
icy waste, would pass before the watcher 
the august shades of the poets of five hun- 
dred years. Now would glide the ghosts 
of Chaucer, Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, 
Dryden, Cowley, Congreve, Addison, Prior, 
Campbell, Gariick, Burke, Sheridan, New- 
ton, and Macaulay — children of divine 
genius, that here mingled with the earth. 
The grim Edward, who so long ravaged 
Scotland ; the blunt, chivalrous Henry, who 
conquered France ; the lovely, lamentable 
victim at Pomfret, and the harsh, haughty, 
astute victor at Bosworth ; James with his 
babbling tongue, and William with his im- 
passive, predominant visage — they would all 
mingle with the spectral multitude, and 
vanish into the gloom. Gentler faces, too, 
might here once more reveal their loveliness 
and their grief — Eleanor de Bohun, broken- 
hearted for her murdered lord ; Elizabeth 
Claypole, the meek, merciful, beloved daugh- 



262 A BOEROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

ter of Cromwell ; Matilda, Queen to Henry 
the First, and model of every grace and 
virtue ; and poor Anne Neville, destroyed 
by the baleful x^assion of Gloster. Strange 
sights, truly, in the lonesome Abbey to- 
night ! 

In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's 
Cathedral how thrilling now must be the 
heavy stillness ! No sound can enter there. 
No breeze from the upper world can stir the 
dust upon those massive sepulchres. Even 
in day-time that shadowy vista, with its 
groined arches, and the black tombs of 
Wellington and Nelson, and the ponderous 
funeral-car of the Iron Duke, is seen with a 
shudder. How strangely, how fearfully the 
mind would be impressed, of him who should 
wander there to-night ! What sublime re- 
flections would be his, standing beside the 
ashes of the great Admiral, and thinking of 
that fiery, dauntless spirit — so simple, reso- 
lute, and true — who made the earth and the 
seas alike resound with the splendid tumult 
oi his deeds. Somewhere beneath this pave- 
ment is the dust of Sir Philip Sidney — buried 
hei^e before the destruction of the old cathe- 
dral, in the great fire of 1666 — and here, too, 
is the nameless grave of the mighty Duke of 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 263 

Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Shakespeare was 
only twenty-two years old when Sidney fell, 
at the battle of Zutphen, and, bemg then 
resident in London, he might readily have 
seen, and doubtless did see, the splendid 
funeral procession with which the body of 
that heroic gentleman — radiant and im- 
mortal example of perfect chivalry — was 
borne to the tomb. Hither came Henry of 
Hereford — returning from exile and deposing 
the handsome, visionary, useless Richard — 
to mourn over the relics of his father, dead 
of sorrow for his son's absence and his coun- 
try's shame. Here, at the venerable age of 
ninety-one, the glorious brain of Wren found 
rest at last, beneath the stupendous temple 
that himself had reared. The watcher in the 
crypt to-night would see, perchance, or 
fancy that he saw, these figures from the 
storied past. Beneath this roof— the soul 
and the perfect symbol of sublimity ! — are 
ranged more than fourscore monuments to 
heroic martial persons who have died for 
England, by land or sea. Here, too, are 
gathered, in everlasting repose, the hon- 
oured relics of men who were famous in 
the arts of peace. Reynolds and Opie, 
Lawrence and West, Landseer, Turner, 



264 A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

Cruikshank, and many more, sleep under 
the sculptured pavement where now the 
pilgrim walks. For fifteen centuries a Chris- 
tian church has stood upon this spot, and 
through it has poured, with organ strains 
and glancing lights, an endless procession 
of prelates and statesmen, of poets and war- 
riors and kings. Surely this is hallowed and 
haunted ground ! Surely to him the spirits 
of the mighty dead would be very near, who 
— alone, in the darkness — should stand to- 
night within those sacred walls, and hear, 
beneath that awful dome, the mellow thun- 
der of the bells of God. 

How looks, to-night, the interior of the 
chapel of the Foundling Hospital ? Dark and 
lonesome, no doubt, with its heavy galleries 
and sombre pews, and the great organ — 
Handel's gift — standing there, mute and 
grim, l)etween the ascending tiers of empty 
seats. But never, in my remembrance, will 
it cease to present a picture more impressive 
and touching than words can say. At least 
three hundred children, rescued from shame 
and penury by this noble benevolence, were 
ranged around that organ when I saw it, 
and, in their artless, frail little voices, sing- 
ing a hymn of praise and worship. Well-nigh 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 265 

one hundred and fifty years have passed since 
this grand institution of charity — the sacred 
work and blessed legacy of Captain Thomas 
Coram — was established in this place. What 
a divine good it has accomplished, and con- 
tinues to accomplish, and what a pure glory 
hallows its founder's name ! Here the poor 
mother, betrayed and deserted, may take 
her child, and find for it a safe and happy 
home, and a chance in life — nor will she 
herself be turned adrift without sympathy 
and help. The poet and novelist George 
Croly was once chaplain of the Foundling 
Hospital, and he preached some noble 
sermons there ; but these were thought to 
be above the comprehension of his usual 
audience, and he presently resigned the 
place. It was an aged clergyman who 
preached there within my hearing, and I 
remember he consumed the most part of an 
hour in saying that a good way in which to 
keep the tongue from speaking evil is to 
keep the heart kind and pure. Better than 
any sermon, though, was the spectacle of 
those poor children, rescued out of their 
helplessness, and reared in comfort and 
afiection. Several fine works of art are 
owned by this hospital and shown to 



266 A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

visitors — paintings by Gainsborough and 
Reynolds, and a portrait of Captain Coram, 
by Hogarth. May the turf lie lightly on 
him, wheresoever he rests, and daisies and 
violets deck his hallowed grave ! No man 
ever did a better deed than he, and the 
darkest night that ever was cannot darken 
his fame. 

How dim and silent now are all those 
narrow and dingy little streets and lanes 
around Paul's Churchyard and the Temple, 
where Johnson and Goldsmith loved to 
ramble ! More than once have I wandered 
there, in the late hours of the night, meet- 
ing scarce a human creature, but conscious 
of a royal company indeed, of the wits and 
poets and players of a far-off time. Dark- 
ness now, on busy Smithfield, where once 
the frequent, cruel flames of bigotry shed 
forth a glare that sickened the light of day. 
Murky and grim enough to-night is that 
grand processional walk in St. Bartholomew's 
Chapel, where the great grey pillars, and 
splendid Norman arches of the twelfth cen- 
tury are mouldering in neglect and decay. 
Sweet to fancy and dear in recollection, the 
old church comes back to me now, with the 
sound of children's voices and the wail of 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 267 

the organ strangely breaking on its pensive 
rest. Stillness and peace over arid Bunhill 
Fields — the last haven of many a Puritan 
worthy, and hallowed to many a pilgrim as 
the resting-place of Bunyan and of Watts. 
In many a park and gloomy square the 
watcher now would hear only a rustling of 
leaves or the fretful twitter of half-awakened 
birds. Around Primrose Hill and out to- 
ward Hampstead many a night-walk have I 
taken, that seemed like rambling in a desert 
— so dark and still are the walled houses, so 
perfect is the solitude. In Drury Lane, 
even at this late hour, there would be some 
movement ; but cold and dense as ever the 
shadows are resting on that little graveyard, 
behind it, where Lady Dedlock went to die. 
The place, it is a comfort to know, has been 
cleaned, of late, and is now decent and in 
order — as all such places should be. To 
walk in Bow Street now, — might it not be 
to meet the shades of Waller and Wycherley 
and Betterton, who lived and died there ; 
to have a greeting from the silver-tongued 
Barry ; or to see, in draggled lace and ruffles, 
the stalwart figure and flushed and royster- 
ing countenance of Henry Fielding ? Very 
quiet now are those grim stone chambers 



268 A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

in the terrible Tower of London, where 
so many tears have fallen, and so many 
noble hearts been split with sorrow. Does 
Brackenbury still kneel in the cold, lonely, 
vacant chapel of St. John ; or the sad ghost 
of Monmouth hover in the chancel of St. 
Peter's ? How sweet to-night would be 
the rustle of the ivy on the dark walls of 
Hadley Church, where so lately I breathed 
the rose-scented air and heard the warbling 
thrush, and blessed, with a grateful heart, 
the loving-kindness that makes such beauty 
in the world ! Oat there on the hillside of 
Highgate, populous with death, the star- 
light gleams on many a ponderous toml:) 
and the white marble of many a sculptured 
statue, where dear and famous names will 
lure tlie traveller's footsteps for years to 
come. There Lyndhurst rests, in honour 
and peace, and there is hushed the tuneful 
voice of Dempster — never to be heard any 
more, either when snows are flying, or 
"when green leaves come again." Not 
many days have passed since I stood there, 
by the humble gravestone of poor Charles 
Harcourt, and remembered all the gentle en- 
thusiasm with which, five years ago (1S77), 
he spoke to me of the character of Jacques 
— which he loved— and how well he repeated 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 269 

the immortal lines upon the drama of human 
life. For him the ' ' strange, eventful his- 
tory " came early and suddenly to an end. 
In this ground, too, I saw the sculptured 
medallion of the well-beloved George Honey 
— "all his frolics o'er," and nothing left but 
this. Many a golden moment did we have, 
old friend, and by me thou art not forgotten ! 
The lapse of a few years changes the whole 
face of life ; but nothing can ever take from us 
our memories of the past. Here, around me, 
in the still watches of the night, are the faces 
that will never smile again, and the voices 
that will speak no more — Sothern, with his 
silver hair and bright and kindly smile, from 
that crowded corner of the little church- 
yard of Southampton ; and droll Harry 
Beckett, and poor Adelaide Neilson, from 
the dismal cemetery of Brompton. And if 
I look from yonder window I shall not see 
either the lions of Landseer or the homeless 
and vagrant wretches who sleep around 
them ; but high in her silver chariot, sur- 
rounded with all the pomp and splendour 
that royal England knows, and marching to 
her coronation in Westminster Abbey, the 
beautiful figure of Anne Bolejm, with her 
dark eyes full of triumph, and her torrent of 



270 A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT. 

golden hair flashing in the sun. On this spot 
is written the whole history of a mighty- 
empire. Here are garnered up such loves 
and hopes, such memories and sorrows, as 
never can be spoken. Pass, ye shadows ! 
Let the night wane and the morning break. 



THE END, 



•^ All that I saw returns tifion my view. 
All that I heard comes hack tipon my ear; 
All that I felt this inoment doth renew." 

'• Fair land! by Time's parental love 7)iade free. 

By Social Order s watchful arms embraced, 

With unexampled union meet in thee, 

For eye and mind, the present a7id the past ; 

With golden prospect for futurity, 

If that be reverenced which ought to last." 

Wordsworth. 



T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY. 



SKESPEM ENGLl 

BYHVILLM WI/\TEIl 




TICKNOR & COMPANY 



